Phishing – Phishmas Greetings

This room was released on day twelve of the event and focuses on detecting phishing emails.

Task 1 Introduction

Read the story background.

Start the Virtual Machine and navigate to the Email Inspector web page.

Flag
There is no question or answer for this section.

Task 2 Spotting Phishing Emails

Read about phishing emails and how to detect them. Phishing differs from spam in that it aims to gain access to systems by stealing credentials or causing malware to be run. Spam uses volume and is typically focused on engagement or promotion instead.

Go through the emails in the Email Inspector and classify them.

Email 1 is apparently an invoice from Santa Claus.

Screenshot of the top of email from PayPal about an invoice from Santa Claus

Read all the details and identify the three elements that lead you to the classification.

Flag

Phishing signals:

  • Spoofing
  • Sense of Urgency
  • Fake Invoice
THM{yougotnumber1-keep-it-going}

Email 2 looks like a new audio message from McSkidy.

Screenshot of the notice about the audio message

Read all the details and identify the three elements that lead you to the classification.

Flag

Phishing signals:

  • Impersonation
  • Spoofing
  • Malicious Attachment
THM{nmumber2-was-not-tha-thard!}

Email 3 appears to be an urgent VPN access request from McSkidy.

Screenshot of the top of the email requested urgent VPN access

Read all the details and identify the three elements that lead you to the classification.

Flag

Phishing signals:

  • Impersonation
  • Social Engineering Text
  • Sense of Urgency
THM{Impersonation-is-areal-thing-keepIt}

Email 4 looks to be a file shared notification.

Screenshot of the top of the file share notification email

Read all the details and identify the three elements that lead you to the classification.

Flag

Phishing signals:

  • Impersonation
  • External Sender Domain
  • Social Engineering Text
THM{Get-back-SOC-mas!!}

Email 5 promises to improve logistics over the holiday season.

Screenshot of the top of email about event logistics

Read all the details and identify the three elements that lead you to the classification.

Flag

This was a spam email.

THM{It-was-just-a-sp4m!!}

Email 6 looks to be a shared file notification email.

Screenshot of top of Christmas Laptop Upgrade Agreement email

Read all the details and identify the three elements that lead you to the classification.

Flag

Phishing signals:

  • Impersonation
  • Typosquatting/Punycodes
  • Social Engineering Text
THM{number6-is-the-last-one!-DX!}