• Sublime Core Feed
Medium Severity

Body: Embedded email headers indicative of thread hijacking/abuse

Description

Detects email headers embedded in the message body content, indicating forwarded phishing attempts, MIME boundary manipulation, delivery notification spoofing, or copy-paste phishing. This pattern is commonly seen when attackers forward legitimate emails and the headers get included in the body, or when spoofing system notifications.

References

No references.

Sublime Security
Created Dec 1st, 2025 • Last updated Dec 1st, 2025
Source
type.inbound
// Headers are in the body.plain.raw but not the body.html.raw
and 2 of (
  strings.icontains(body.plain.raw, "Delivered-To:")
  and not strings.icontains(body.html.raw, "Delivered-To:"),
  strings.icontains(body.plain.raw, "X-Google-Smtp-Source:")
  and not strings.icontains(body.html.raw, "X-Google-Smtp-Source:"),
  strings.icontains(body.plain.raw, "ARC-Seal: i=")
  and not strings.icontains(body.html.raw, "ARC-Seal: i="),
)
and 1 of (
  regex.icontains(body.plain.raw, "Received: by .{10,80} with SMTP id")
  and not regex.icontains(body.html.raw, "Received: by .{10,80} with SMTP id"),
  regex.icontains(body.plain.raw, "X-Received: by .{10,80} with SMTP id")
  and not regex.icontains(body.html.raw, "X-Received: by .{10,80} with SMTP id"),
)
// Negate legitimate forwards where users intentionally include headers
and not (
  (length(headers.references) > 0 or headers.in_reply_to is not null)
  and (subject.is_forward or subject.is_reply)
  and length(body.previous_threads) >= 1
)
// Sender is not from org or high trust domains
and sender.email.domain.root_domain not in $org_domains
and (
  (
    sender.email.domain.root_domain in $high_trust_sender_root_domains
    and not headers.auth_summary.dmarc.pass
  )
  or sender.email.domain.root_domain not in $high_trust_sender_root_domains
)
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