Homoglyphs are characters from different Unicode scripts that look identical or nearly identical to each other. For example, the Latin 'a' (U+0061) and Cyrillic 'а' (U+0430) appear identical in most fonts but are completely different characters to computers.

Why are homoglyphs a security concern?

Homoglyphs can be used in phishing attacks to create deceptive URLs and domain names that appear legitimate. For example, 'аpple.com' using a Cyrillic 'а' looks identical to 'apple.com' but leads to a different domain. This is known as an IDN homograph attack.

How can I detect homoglyphs in text?

Use the detector tool on this page to paste suspicious text and highlight any non-ASCII characters. The tool identifies characters that look like standard Latin letters but are actually from other Unicode scripts like Cyrillic or Greek.

Homoglyph Generator & Detector - Unicode Look-Alike Characters

Homoglyph Generator & Detector

Convert text using look-alike Unicode characters or detect hidden homoglyphs in suspicious text.

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Homoglyph Text

Character Breakdown

Detect Homoglyphs in Text

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Analysis Result

Found non-ASCII character(s) out of total characters.

Non-ASCII characters are highlighted in red. These may be homoglyphs designed to look like standard Latin letters.

No suspicious characters found. All characters are standard ASCII.

Homoglyphs & Security

Homoglyph attacks (also called IDN homograph attacks) exploit the visual similarity between characters from different Unicode scripts. A malicious actor might register a domain like gооgle.com where the two 'o' characters are actually Cyrillic 'о' (U+043E) instead of Latin 'o' (U+006F).

Common Homoglyph Pairs

a (Latin) vs а (Cyrillic U+0430)

e (Latin) vs е (Cyrillic U+0435)

o (Latin) vs о (Cyrillic U+043E)

p (Latin) vs р (Cyrillic U+0440)

c (Latin) vs с (Cyrillic U+0441)

x (Latin) vs х (Cyrillic U+0445)

Modern browsers mitigate this risk by displaying internationalised domain names (IDNs) in Punycode when they contain mixed scripts. However, homoglyphs remain a concern in usernames, emails, source code, and any context where visual inspection is relied upon for verification.

For more on Unicode characters and their properties, see our Unicode Lookup tool and Text to Unicode Converter.

Homoglyph Generator & Detector

Generate Homoglyph Text

Detect Homoglyphs in Text

Homoglyphs & Security

Common Homoglyph Pairs

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