Phishing Email Analysis – Project Brief

What is a Phishing Email?

Phishing emails are deceptive emails which are used by an attacker to gain confidential
information of the victim. It is a type of social engineering attack. Such emails appear to be
from valid sources. The purpose of such a social engineering attack is to:
• Acquire trade secrets
• Acquire banking details
• Infect systems with malware
• Direct to fake websites
• Deceive user to make payments

The cybercriminals pose as legitimate officials or services so that the victims are under the
impression that the email is from a legitimate source. Following are a few examples of
phishing emails:
• Account Deactivation
• Compromised Credit Card
• Fund Transfer
• Social Media Request
• Fake Google Doc Login
• Technical Support Request
• Vishing or voice-based hacking
• Pretexting
• Angler Phishing
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I8J205YCDR How to spot a phishing email?

➢ Match the sender’s email address with the name of the organization they claim to be
representing.
➢ Check for syntax and grammatical errors
➢ Check if the email denotes a sense of urgency
➢ Check if the email has attachments which were not expected
➢ Check for unusual subject line
➢ Analyse the external links present in the body of the email

Project Overview:
This project consists of two tasks.
Task 1: You will be analysing the given emails & find out which of them are phishing
emails. In order to identify the phishing emails, use the techniques as described
above and in the learning videos.

Task 2: The security team continuously flags emails for suspicious links. The team
has found 5 links given below. Your task is to assess 5 URLs and identify if they are
safe or malicious.

The project consists of a total of 30 points.

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 Pro tip:
Analyse the links present in the body of the emails. You can analyse the URL’s by
hovering over the links and copying the URL using right-click.

Once you have copied the URL, you can use a text file to paste the link and analyse
it.

If you are using Adobe reader, the links would appear while hovering over the link.

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You can follow the same process for Windows and Mac.

Warning: The sample emails and the URL’s are part of real-world phishing or
spam emails, please ensure that you do not click on the links to access the
websites or interact with any IP, domain etc.

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 Task details and instructions:
Task 1:
Following are 5 sample emails. Use your knowledge of phishing emails and analyse
the authenticity of the emails. Sample emails are provided below:

Email #1

Click here to view this fax online

Email #2

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This Photo!

Email #3

Change Password

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 Email #4

Upgrade your Dropbox

Get more space

Dropbox for Business.

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Email #5

Change Password

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 Task 2:
The Security team at your organization has been monitoring phishing emails on a
regular basis. The Security team has identified 5 URL’s which appear to be
malicious.

The 5 URL’s are:

URL #1: www.wizy.io
URL #2: login-bankofamerlca.com
URL #3: http://netfilix.org/
URL #4: bharatpestcontrol.in
URL #5: trusstwallet.site

Your task is to ascertain whether these URL’s are malicious or not. Use the online
tool- https://urlscan.io/ and analyse the activity on the website. You can paste the URL
in the search box to analyse the activity on the URL.

Pro Tip: If you want to view the live screenshot of the associated webpage, you can click on
“Live Screenshot” to do the same without visiting the webpage.
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Click on Live screenshot

Click on Image for Screenshot Now

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 The Live Screenshot would look like:

Submission details:
Once you have completed both the tasks, please answer the following questions to
submit the project report.

Task 1:
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I8J205YCDR 1. Is Email #1 a phishing email? Why or Why not? Please provide screenshot
indicating your assessment and explain the same in words. (3 points)
2. Is Email #2 a phishing email? Why or Why not? Please provide screenshot
indicating your assessment and explain the same in words. (3 points)
3. Is Email #3 a phishing email? Why or Why not? Please provide screenshot
indicating your assessment and explain the same in words. (3 points)
4. Is Email #4 a phishing email? Why or Why not? Please provide screenshot
indicating your assessment and explain the same in words. (3 points)
5. Is Email #5 a phishing email? Why or Why not? Please provide screenshot
indicating your assessment and explain the same in words. (3 points)

Task 2:
1. Is URL #1 a malicious URL? Why or Why not? Explain.
Please provide a live screenshot of the webpage using the online tool
https://urlscan.io/. (3 points)
2. Is URL #2 a malicious URL? Why or Why not? Explain.
Please provide a live screenshot of the webpage using the online tool
https://urlscan.io/. (3 points)
3. Is URL #3 a malicious URL? Why or Why not? Explain.
Please provide a live screenshot of the webpage using the online tool
https://urlscan.io/. (3 points)
4. Is URL #4 a malicious URL? Why or Why not? Explain.
Please provide a live screenshot of the webpage using the online tool
https://urlscan.io/. (3 points)
5. Is URL #5 a malicious URL? Why or Why not? Explain.

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 Please provide a live screenshot of the webpage using the online tool
https://urlscan.io/. (3 points)

Please use the Sample Report Format (published on Olympus) to submit the assignment.

Project Support:

Q&A forum for offline support: Discussion board.

You can also post your queries on the discussion forums available on Olympus.

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