• Sublime Core Feed
Medium Severity

Impersonation using recipient domain (untrusted sender)

Description

The recipient's domain is used in the sender's display name in order to impersonate the organization. The impersonation has been observed to use both the recipient's full email address, as well as just the domain.

References

No references.

Sublime Security
Created Aug 17th, 2023 • Last updated Jan 12th, 2026
Source
type.inbound

// only 1 To: recipient
and length(recipients.to) + length(recipients.bcc) + length(recipients.cc) == 1
and any(recipients.to,
        // custom domains only
        sender.email.domain.domain not in $free_email_providers

        // recipient's domain is in the sender's display name
        and strings.icontains(sender.display_name, .email.domain.root_domain)
)
and not (
  (
    strings.contains(sender.display_name, "on behalf of")
    and sender.email.domain.root_domain == "microsoftonline.com"
  )
  or (
    strings.contains(sender.display_name, "via TransferXL")
    and sender.email.domain.root_domain == "transferxl.com"
  )
)
and all(recipients.to,
        .email.domain.root_domain != sender.email.domain.root_domain
)
and (
  profile.by_sender().prevalence in ("new", "outlier")
  or (
    profile.by_sender().any_messages_malicious_or_spam
    and not profile.by_sender().any_messages_benign
  )
)

// negate highly trusted sender domains unless they fail DMARC authentication
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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