Detection Method: Header analysis

Header analysis inspects the metadata in message headers to find suspicious patterns, anomalies, or inconsistencies that could indicate phishing, spoofing, or other types of malicious activity. It looks at various header fields like routing information, authentication results, and sender verification data to help spot potential threats.

This includes sender authentication headers like SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) results to verify the sender's legitimacy. It also checks how the email traveled through mail servers, looking for any unusual routing that might suggest tampering.

Header analysis can detect:

For example, attackers might try to forge email headers to make phishing emails appear as if they’re coming from a trusted source like your bank or your company’s internal email. Header analysis helps you catch these attempts by identifying mismatches between the displayed sender and the actual sending server.