
Summary
This inbound email detection rule flags messages that impersonate Microsoft account verification and carry suspicious indicators in the subject. It targets messages asserting a Microsoft account verification sent from a microsoftonline.com domain and evaluates the subject for a collection of red flags: phone-number patterns, monetary amounts (USD or dollar figures), suspicious top-level domains, explicit content or adult-lure language, and long action-oriented phrases. The rule requires a combination of conditions (subject content, sender domain, and specific patterns) to trigger. It uses various checks including domain-based sender validation (root_domain == "microsoftonline.com"), subject base and subject subject text, regex patterns for phone numbers and currencies, TLD/dictionary-based suspicions, confusable-string normalization for content, and heuristic length plus verb-based prompts. It is designed to catch credential phishing and spam attempts that leverage brand impersonation and social engineering tactics in the subject line, with sender/content analysis as primary detection methods. The rule is categorized under credential phishing and spam with impersonation and social-engineering tactics, and would be useful for email security gateways and protective monitoring around high-risk brand impersonation attempts.
Categories
- Web
- Identity Management
Data Sources
- Domain Name
- Process
Created: 2026-05-08