Medium Severity

Attachment: DOCX with hyperlink targeting recipient address

Labels

Credential Phishing

Malware/Ransomware

Description

Detects DOCX attachments containing hyperlinks with anchor references that match recipient email addresses. This technique is commonly used to personalize malicious documents and evade detection.

References

No references.

Sublime Security

Created Dec 17th, 2025 • Last updated Dec 17th, 2025

Feed Source

Sublime Core Feed

Source

GitHub

type.inbound
and any(filter(attachments, .file_extension in ('docx', 'docm')),
        any(filter(file.explode(.),
                   strings.icontains(.scan.strings.raw, '<w:hyperlink')
            ),
            any(regex.iextract(.scan.strings.raw,
                               '<w:hyperlink[^\>]*w:anchor="(?P<email_address>[^\"]+)"'
                ),
                .named_groups["email_address"] == recipients.to[0].email.email
                or any(strings.scan_base64(.named_groups["email_address"],
                                           ignore_padding=true
                       ),
                       strings.icontains(., recipients.to[0].email.email)
                )
            )
        )
)

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