• Sublime Core Feed

Description

Detects messages impersonating UK government agencies (Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration, gov.uk) that contain links not leading to legitimate gov.uk domains or show credential theft language, from senders not authenticated as official government domains.

References

No references.

Sublime Security
Created Sep 15th, 2025 • Last updated Sep 15th, 2025
Source
type.inbound

// UK government agencies in display name or subject with homograph protection
and (
  any([
        strings.replace_confusables(sender.display_name),
        strings.replace_confusables(subject.subject)
      ],
      strings.ilike(.,
                    "*sponsorship management system*",
                    "*Sponsor Management System*"
      )
      // exact match of high confidence
      or . in~ ("Home Office", "uk home office", "UK Visas and Immigration")
  )
  // image is srced from the actual home office URL
  or strings.icontains(body.html.raw,
                       '"https://www.points.homeoffice.gov.uk/gui-sms-jsf/images/'
  )
  // observed footers in messages
  or 2 of (
    strings.icontains(body.current_thread.text, '© Crown Copyright '),
    strings.icontains(body.current_thread.text, '© 2025 Home Office'),
    strings.icontains(body.current_thread.text, '© UK Visas and Immigration'),
    regex.icontains(body.current_thread.text, ' [||–-—] Home Office'),
    regex.icontains(body.current_thread.text, ' [|–-—] UK Visas and Immigration'),
    strings.icontains(body.current_thread.text,
                      'This is an automated message from UK Visas and Immigration.'
    ),
    strings.icontains(body.current_thread.text,
                      'This is an automated notification from the Home Office'
    ), 
    regex.icontains(body.current_thread.text,
                      'You(?: are|''re) receiving this notification as a registered SMS user'
    ), 
    regex.icontains(body.current_thread.text,
                      'If you are not the designated.{0,50}SMS user'
    ),
  )
)

//  Not from legitimate UK government domains
and not (
  sender.email.domain.tld == "gov.uk" and headers.auth_summary.dmarc.pass
)

// 
and (
  // there are links that do not link to "gov.uk"
  not all(body.links, .href_url.domain.tld == "gov.uk")
  // OR credential theft intent detected  
  or any(ml.nlu_classifier(body.current_thread.text).intents,
         .name == "cred_theft" and .confidence in ("medium", "high")
  )
  // link based indicators
  or any(body.links,
         // suspicious display text
         (
           .display_text in ("Access SMS", "Login to SMS", "Log in to SMS", "Access UKVI Account")
           and .href_url.domain.tld != "gov.uk"
         )
         // there are mismatched links
         or (
           .display_url.domain.tld == "gov.uk"
           and .href_url.domain.tld != "gov.uk"
           and .mismatched
         )

         // the path refers to the uk stuff
         or (
           .href_url.domain.tld != "gov.uk"
           and strings.icontains(.href_url.path, 'gov.uk')
         )
  )
)

// no previous threads
and not (length(headers.references) > 0 or length(body.previous_threads) > 0)
// negate a high amount of links or newsletters
and not (
  length(body.links) > 20
  or any(ml.nlu_classifier(body.html.display_text).topics,
         .name == "Newsletters and Digests"
  )
)
//  High-trust domain exclusion
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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