Inyova’s short monthly newsletter about security recommendations, news, and interesting facts.
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Today’s topic: Forgotten email spoofing
Sweet intro to email
Email communication is based on a 40-year-old set of formatting & processing rules called SMTP protocol. The required structure could be compared to a physical letter. SMTP asks for basic sender/receiver information in the header, and a message stored in the body. To top it off, it’s all wrapped in the envelope with the sender/receiver information once again. To protect our emails, we additionally use TLS to encrypt them (SMTPS protocol).
Safe and sound, right?
What happened?
Recently, I received an email with a warning from my email service that an email is spoofed. It’s a phishing technique that is easily forgotten or ignored by users, but it is widely spread, easy to use, and can result in catastrophic security implications.
What the hack is email spoofing?
When someone sends us a phishing email, we recognise it quickly. The attacker impersonates John Doe, but the sender’s email address doesn’t match John Doe’s email. Busted, reported.
Email spoofing is an attack where a hacker alters the sender’s email. The attacker claims to be John Doe, and the email seems to be sent from John Doe’s email.
How’s that even possible?
How email spoofing works
It all comes back to the SMTP. The protocol allows you to alter the envelope and the header. Email services display the sender with whatever text is saved in the From (header) field. Meanwhile, the true sender identity is hidden in the Mail From (envelope) field.
Victims interact with the malicious email, share private data, share private accesses, payment information, and more. Email spoofing is illegal and it is considered to be a criminal activity categorised as cybercrime.
What should I do?
Modern email services offer automatic detection of spoofed emails via SPF (Sender Policy Framework). You can check if your email service provides an automatic warning for spoofed emails.
If you are still unsure, you can always easily run the email through the header analysis. For example, this is how to do it on Gmail. And you can use DKIM – a digital signature for your emails, which is luckily often active by default in modern email services.
That’s it! Keep your mechanics safe and thanks for reading.
Sources:
https://www.tessian.com/blog/what-is-email-spoofing/
https://cybernews.com/secure-email-providers/email-spoofing/
https://www.vaadata.com/blog/phishing-how-to-prevent-email-spoofing/
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