CY-I Situation One – FBI Jobs Major Case

Introduction

The head of a company recently recieved an email from an external source. The link looked like it was from Bank of America about one of his corporate account logins. He clicked on the link and went to log in, but the screen kept saying that his information was incorrect. Later on, that corporate account was emptied into another account. The head of the company wants you to look at the email he received and figure out whether it is to blame for what happened.

Glossary

When analyzing an email, you should begin by looking at the email header. The email header is almost like an email’s passport, and it will let you figure out where the email came from and the steps it took along the way. There are a few key parts to an email header, and they are as follows:

This is the person who sent the email. Sometimes it is clear that the email address is fake; for example, there may be a small misspelling of the real sender’s email.
Always check the IP address if you believe phishing has occurred.

This is the person who received the email and is the target of a possible phishing attempt.
In a situation like this, the email is likely “whaling.” This is when a believable, but false, email is sent to a CEO or upper management in a company to gain access to credentials.

This is the exchange sender and is generally a mail client server.

This is the exchange receiver and is generally a mail client server.

IP addresses are relatively unique identifiers for systems connected to the internet. They are important for attributing behavior within a certain time to an actor online.
IP Resolution is the process of taking an IP and getting information back on whom owns it, who it is assigned to, the location, and more.

Analyzing Email Headers

Following Up

Now that you have analyzed the email header, it is important to follow up on the information extracted. Normally you would do this using IP resolution tools. These are tools that can take an IP address and increase the information you have on it. For example, tools like MaxMind, Shodan, Spur, DomainTools, and more help investigators learn more about an IP and possibly attribute it to a bad actor. The FBI even has in-house tools that are entirely open source to give us more information on IP addresses, including the ISP (Internet Service Provider), the approximate location, if it is running on Tor, and more.

Example Output

Below is example output from a search that was run on several IP addresses using an in-house tool. This tool will tell you if they were using some sort of anonymization infrastructure, their approximate location, the internet service provider (ISP), and more.

Situation One