Medium Severity

Link: Microsoft protected message with suspicious recipient patterns

Description

Detects when a user receives a protected message (RPMSG) with the to and from headers matching or there is no TO header at all. Benign matches are possible, sender exclusions can be used to avoid matching on senders which commonly use Microsoft protected messages with suspicious recipient patterns

References

No references.

Sublime Security
Created Jul 2nd, 2025 • Last updated Aug 27th, 2026
Source
type.inbound
// contains the rpmsg
and any(attachments,
        .file_extension == "rpmsg"
        or .content_type == "application/x-microsoft-rpmsg-message"
)
// contains the proper link
and any(body.links,
        .href_url.domain.root_domain == "office365.com"
        and (
          strings.icontains(.href_url.query_params, "InternetMessageID=")
          or strings.icontains(.href_url.path, '/Encryption/retrieve.ashx')
        )
)
and (
  // self sender 
  (
    length(recipients.to) == 1
    and recipients.to[0].email.email == sender.email.email
  )
  // no recipients at all
  or length(recipients.to) == 0
)
MQL Rule Console
DocsLearning Labs

Playground

Test against your own EMLs or sample data.

Share

Post about this on your socials.

Get Started. Today.

Managed or self-managed. No MX changes.

Deploy and integrate a free Sublime instance in minutes.
Get Started