HackBlue

Labs / Email and phishing

Where the parcel notice really came from

Read a Received chain from the bottom up. Find the first hop, the desktop name and IP it was sent from, and the clue in Message-ID that a courier’s mail platform did not send it.

  • Terminal mission
  • Beginner
  • 3 objectives
  • 0 of 3 solved

Briefing

Each mail server adds a Received header on top as it passes a message along, so the oldest hop is at the bottom. The bottom one usually shows the sending client.

A large courier sends notices from its own mail platform. Here the bottom hop is an authenticated submission (ESMTPSA) from a Windows desktop name.

analyst@mail-triage

mail-triage · Email and phishing

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