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Forged Email Protection A Trend Micro White Paper | October 2017 Forged Email Protection Smart Protection for Office 365 >> An analysis of email forgery techniques and protection methods available in Trend Micro SaaS email security products CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Types of Forged Email Attacks ................................................................................................................................................ 4 “Envelope From” versus “Message From” ....................................................................................................................... 4 Forged “Envelope From” ................................................................................................................................................. 6 Forged “Message From” .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Cousin Domain Abuse ..................................................................................................................................................... 8 Free Email Account Abuse ............................................................................................................................................... 9 Compromised Email Account ......................................................................................................................................... 10 Trend Micro Solutions .......................................................................................................................................................... 11 Forged “Envelope From” Protection .............................................................................................................................. 11 Forged “Message From” Protection ............................................................................................................................... 12 Cousin Domain Abuse Protection .................................................................................................................................. 12 Free Email Account Abuse Protection ............................................................................................................................ 12 Compromised Email Account Abuse Protection ............................................................................................................ 13 References ............................................................................................................................................................................ 14 Hosted Email Security .................................................................................................................................................... 14 Cloud App Security ........................................................................................................................................................ 14 Page 2 of 14 | Trend Micro White Paper Forged Email Protection - Smart Protection for Office 365 INTRODUCTION Email has been a major communication tool for most companies and organization for many years now. From simple conversations, sharing information, to doing major business transactions, email is involved in many daily activities. As the popularity and usage of email grew, so did the abuses and exploits from attackers using this communication channel. The simplicity and ease of email forging makes it one of the favorite tools for bad guys. The lack of sender authentication mechanism in Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) allows spoofing to be used to mislead recipients about the true source of the email. Attackers and scammers often use some form of email forgery to trick their victims. Phishing attacks, spoofed email attacks, and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks use one or more forms of forged emails. Spoofing attacks became more prevalent around the middle of 2015, growing more prominent in the 2nd half of 2016. This attack vector has been so exploited that, according to a report released by the FBI in May 2017, victims of BEC alone lost over $5 billion based on victim complaints worldwide since 2013. Trend Micro predicts this type of attack will remain prominent and will be used in more global attacks. Some malware are also capable of creating spoofed emails that appear to come from the assumed sender. Worm KLEZ and many more modern malware can search a target’s email addresses from the infected system and sends spoofed emails to spread infection. Cybercriminals are also getting more and more creative with their attacks, using one or more ways to forge emails and make them look legitimate to the naked eye. Careful analysis of email headers may be needed to spot these spoofing techniques. Common and non-technical email users are unaware and unfamiliar with such analysis of email headers. Traditional antispam filters need to combine existing technologies with new advancements in email authentication to battle this type of attack. This white paper will show how Trend Micro Smart Protection for Office 365, which includes Hosted Email Security and Cloud App Security, utilizes these technologies to protect Office 365 users from forged or spoofed emails. Page 3 of 14 | Trend Micro White Paper Forged Email Protection - Smart Protection for Office 365 TYPES OF FORGED EMAIL ATTACKS Email forging is the building block of spoofed emails. Phishing and BEC attacks both use forged sender address with the goal of tricking the recipients into thinking that the email came from a legitimate source. As a result, the unknowing victim may disclose sensitive information, send funds to unknown accounts, or even get infected with malware. Email forging techniques include: • Forged “Envelope From” • Forged “Message From” • Cousin Domain Abuse • Free Email Account Abuse • Compromised Email Account “ENVELOPE FROM” VERSUS “MESSAGE FROM” Before diving into the different email forging techniques, let us first describe the different sender information that can be found in an email. An email typically contains two types of sender information: the “Envelope From”, and the “Message From” address. The “Envelope From” is also called by other names such as “MAIL From” and “SMTP From” address. This is the sender address specified in the MAIL FROM: command during the SMTP session. “Envelope From” address is where bounced messages and errors are returned in case of email delivery problems. This address may or may not be visible to the recipient. The “Message From” on the other hand is the address displayed in the From: field of the different mail applications, such as Outlook, that the receiver sees. To see the “Envelope From” address, it may be necessary to open the message headers. The procedure on how to do it depends on the mail client application or web mail application being used. In most normal emails, the “Envelope From” and the “Message From” are the same. This is quite true for personal and individual email addresses within organizations. Page 4 of 14 | Trend Micro White Paper Forged Email Protection - Smart Protection for Office 365 However, there are legitimate uses where these two are not the same. For some auto-mailers, bounced messages are directed to one central repository mailbox, while the user replies go to a different address in the email’s “Message From.” This usage of a special error handling mailbox in “Envelope From” is defined in RFC 5321. “It is possible for the mailbox in the return path to be different from the actual sender’s mailbox, for example, if error responses are to be delivered to a special error handling mailbox rather than to the message sender. When mailing lists are involved, this arrangement is common and useful as a means of directing errors to the list maintainer rather than the message originator.” Although the Return-Path is a good indicator of the “Envelope From” address, it is not always the case. As with other mail headers, it can also be modified just like the sample above. Another important thing to note is that the basic SMTP or email protocols do not require these sender addresses to be authenticated in any way. In its primitive form, an email sender can put any address in either the “Envelope From” or the “Message From” fields without getting rejected so long as the email server or program allows it. These leniencies in the core of email system are what spammers and scammers overly abuse. Page 5 of 14 | Trend Micro White Paper Forged Email Protection - Smart Protection for Office 365 FORGED “ENVELOPE FROM” When forging the “Envelope From” of an email, the attacker, in most cases, fakes the sender address to be the same as the recipient’s domain. In other cases, it can bear a well-known and trusted domain or organization, such as web-based email service providers like Yahoo or Gmail, or banking institutions. The use of a forged internal domain or faked trusted domain urges the recipient to trust that the email came from a legitimate source. This is how the scammers are able to trick the recipient into doing things that they usually wouldn’t do had they known that the email was fraudulent. In this example, the “Envelope From” or “MAIL FROM” claimed to be from a Gmail.com email address. However, the source IP and FQDN of the email clearly doesn’t belong to the Gmail.com domain. Page 6 of 14 | Trend Micro White Paper Forged
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