1. THE SUBJECT LINE
The subject line of an email is much like your first impression - you will get away with nearly anything if you have a good one, and you'll rarely ever recover if you have a bad one. Unfortunately, most of us write bad email subject lines - our subject lines in SE situations tend to be vague and unimaginative.
While it's a natural instinct to want to be as unobtrusive as possible (i.e. when performing most SE engagements, we don't exactly strive to be memorable), this is exactly the logic that will get your emails moved immediately to the "trash" folder (especially if you do a bad job with the next four secrets).
Of course, the subject of the email has to be relevant to what you’ re attempting. If it's not, then you're going to be remembered (and you're going to get reported to the local security team by any moderately responsive workforce).
Phishing Scenario
Typical Subject Line
Good Subject Line
Fake Administrative Update Security Update Important: Patch Your Computer
Malicious PDF Document from a colleague The Documents you Requested Can you believe that he sent me this?
Direct to an entertaining malicious web link You should see this site Have you seen this one?
2. THE EMAIL ADDRESS
The number of phishing attacks that fail because the email address is too "phishy" probably is nearly innumerable. Many of us intuitively understand this and choose phishing emails that appear to come from the target domain; however, this can limit our ability to perform some of the scenarios that we may hope to accomplish.
This can all be avoided with heavy use of your GoDaddy (or other domain registrar) account and some creativity. Some ideas we have tossed around to make incredibly effective phishing email addresses have included the obvious ones (e.g. .net / .org analogues of our clients' domains) as well as some more esoteric tricks to replicate domains (internationalized domain names that have foreign characters that appear similar to the domain we're attempting to replicate).
An interesting one that we've actually used (effectively) was against a customer who we knew to be heavily dependent on Oracle products within their environment. In attacking their IT staff, we knew that a link sent from Oracle was likely to be acted on quickly. Of course, appearing as though we were Oracle was going to be somewhat difficult. We also realized that the letters "c" and "l" placed next to each other look very much like a "d." So, we registered the domain "orade-support.com" (because "orade.com" was taken).
If you're creative, you can come up with any number of opportunities like this given who you're trying to impersonate.
3. SALUTATIONS
The salutation of an email tells us much about the sender and their intent. This all goes back to the way that we learned about letter writing when we were growing up – the difference between "Dear Mike," "Hi Mike" "Mike" and "To whom it may concern" is pronounced in our understanding of what is to follow.
This is one of the fundamental failures of most traditional phishing emails sent from overseas (especially those countries with school systems based on British English like India and Nigeria) – they tend to be far more deferential and formal in their salutations than those in the US and Canada are. Imagine, for example, you are sitting at work and get an email from a co-worker that begins with, "Dear Esteemed Colleague." How suspicious would you be?
Similarly, choosing the correct salutation for your email (and, often, the answer "no salutation" is the right one) is required to ensure that your emails don't set off the target's suspicion.
4. SIGNATURES
Much like the salutation, we learned from a young age that we needed to sign our letters. Consequently, our reaction to the signature of an email is impressed deeply on our unconscious minds. The right signature can soothe a budding suspicion, while the wrong one will set off alarm bells in even the most otherwise perfect email. As an example, take one of the companies that you interact with often (e.g. Paypal, Google, eBay, etc.) and examine the signatures that accompany each.
You will likely discover a constancy of signature across the emails that unconsciously reassures you of who you're dealing with. Likewise, you probably will notice that your friends all sign their emails in a similar way each time.
For example, anyone receiving an email from me will notice that my notes are signed "-Mike" or "-M" nearly every single time.
When I don’ t sign my notes that way, people notice. And anybody attempting to impersonate me had better get that right.
5. TESTING YOUR EMAILS
There are two types of tests that every phishing email should be put through, before it hits the wire to ensure that it has the best chance of success. The first test is to ensure that your email will reach its target, while the second is about ensuring that you're being as appropriate as possible in the way that you write your email.
