• Sublime Core Feed
High Severity

Brand Impersonation: Internal Revenue Service

Labels

BEC/Fraud
Credential Phishing
Impersonation: Brand
Social engineering
Content analysis
Natural Language Understanding
Optical Character Recognition
Sender analysis

Description

Detects messages from senders posing as the Internal Revenue Service by checking display name similarity and content indicators from body text and screenshots. Excludes legitimate IRS domains and authenticated senders.

References

No references.

Sublime Security
Created Apr 7th, 2025 • Last updated Apr 7th, 2025
Feed Source
Sublime Core Feed
Source
GitHub
type.inbound
and (
  // display name contains IRS
  (
    strings.ilike(strings.replace_confusables(sender.display_name),
                  '*internal revenue service*'
    )
  )
  // levenshtein distance similar to IRS
  or strings.ilevenshtein(strings.replace_confusables(sender.display_name),
                          'internal revenue service'
  ) <= 1
)
and (
  any(beta.ml_topic(body.current_thread.text).topics,
      .name in ("Security and Authentication", "Financial Communications")
      and .confidence in ("high")
  )
  or any(beta.ml_topic(beta.ocr(beta.message_screenshot()).text).topics,
         .name in ("Security and Authentication", "Financial Communications")
         and .confidence in ("high")
  )
  or any(ml.nlu_classifier(body.current_thread.text).intents,
         .name == "cred_theft" and .confidence == "high"
  )
  or any(ml.nlu_classifier(beta.ocr(beta.message_screenshot()).text).intents,
         .name == "cred_theft" and .confidence == "high"
  )
)

// and the sender is not in org_domains or from IRS domains and passes auth
and not (
  sender.email.domain.root_domain in $org_domains
  or (
    sender.email.domain.root_domain in ("irs.gov", "govdelivery.com")
    and headers.auth_summary.dmarc.pass
  )
)
// and the sender is not from high trust sender root 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
)
and not profile.by_sender().solicited
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