542562 - international IDN domains (com, net,.. etc.) do not encode/decode the URL

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[beratung]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; de; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; de; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

IDN domains of following international domains are not encoded by firefox but by other browsers (IE8, Opera 10):
COM, NET, ORG, EU

Following IDN Domains work fine:
BIZ, DE, AT, CH

Problem is reproduceable everytime for the international domains: COM, NET, ORG, EU (maybe for more than this); other tested browsers (IE8, Opera10) do show the expected URL 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Enter http://küssaburg.com
2.showing result: http://xn--kssaburg-65a.com/
3.
Actual Results:  
Problem is reproduceable everytime for the international domains: COM, NET, ORG, EU (maybe for more than this)

Expected Results:  
expected URL:
http://küssaburg.com

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

That's because .com and .net are not in the approved list of TLD's that can display IDN URL's (.org is fine actually). See <http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list.html>, which also has a workaround.

Mozilla does this to protect against certain security problems (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack>). Work is being done to improve this, see for instance bug 354592.

Comment 2

[8710190]

This needs to be fixed ASAP. It is a major PITA for non-English users.

Comment 3

[david wright]

I have written a add-on to hopefully help with this issue.
IDN Navbar https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/109224

The IDN (International Domain Name) Navbar add-on provides address bar support for all IDN's, including '.com', '.net' and '.eu'. An 'IDN' address bar icon will be visible when this add-on has decoded a Punycode URL to it's IDN.

Hopefully this will be of use to you until the IDN issues are resolved in Firefox 'core'.

The add-on is still marked as 'experimental' because it's new and has not been reviewed yet, it should not crash your browser or cause any detrimental effects though.

Comment 4

[timeless]

this is as designed. these domains aren't supposed to be using idn yet (if ever) ... especially for security reasons.

giving the bug to Gerv who probably has the last say. Do not reopen.

To AMO admins: I respectfully request that an addon which defeats our security precautions be red flagged at the very least.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv] (not reading bugmail)]

Yes, definitely INVALID. Any registry can apply at any time for inclusion, as the above-linked document says, and the requirements are not IMO onerous. Just "prevent spoofing, we don't mind how you do it". Any registry which can't sign up to that is not one we want to allow IDN for.

If you don't like this policy, write to your registry, point them at this URL:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list.html
and encourage them to apply.

Gerv