Medium Severity

Attachment: Targeted DOCX with personalized recipient acknowledgement lure

Description

Detects inbound messages with a DOCX attachment containing a quarterly date reference, specific STATUS and ACKNOWLEDGEMENT formatting patterns, and a personalized salutation where the recipient's name or local email part is dynamically embedded in the document XML.

References

No references.

Sublime Security
Created Aug 4th, 2026 • Last updated Aug 4th, 2026
Source
type.inbound
and any(filter(attachments, .file_type == "docx"),
        any(filter(file.explode(.), .file_name == "word/document.xml"),
            // doc xml has a QX 2026 type date
            regex.contains(.scan.strings.raw, '<w:t>Q[1-4]\S202[5-9]<\/w:t>')
            // and a couple of the terms we've seen in the document with specific spacing reqs
            and strings.contains(.scan.strings.raw,
                                 '<w:t xml:space="preserve">STATUS </w:t>'
            )
            and strings.contains(.scan.strings.raw,
                                 '<w:t xml:space="preserve">ACKNOWLEDGEMENT </w:t>'
            )
            // and doc xml has some reference to the user's name in there too?
            and any(regex.extract(.scan.strings.raw,
                                  '<w:t xml:space="preserve">Dear </w:t></w:r><w:r><w:rPr><w:b /><w:bCs /><w:color w:val="[a-f0-9]{6}" /><w:sz w:val="[0-9]{1,3}" /><w:szCs w:val="[0-9]{1,3}" /></w:rPr><w:t>(?P<name>.*?)</w:t></w:r>'
                    ),
                    any(recipients.to,
                        (
                          ..named_groups["name"] =~ .email.local_part
                          or ..named_groups["name"] =~ .display_name
                        )
                    )
            )
        )
)
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