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ProofPoint Targeted Attack Protection

Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) helps detect, mitigate, and block advanced threats that target people through email.

The following Sekoia.io built-in rules match the intake Proofpoint TAP. This documentation is updated automatically and is based solely on the fields used by the intake which are checked against our rules. This means that some rules will be listed but might not be relevant with the intake.

SEKOIA.IO x Proofpoint TAP on ATT&CK Navigator

CVE-2020-0688 Microsoft Exchange Server Exploit

Detects the exploitation of CVE-2020-0688. The POC exploit a .NET serialization vulnerability in the Exchange Control Panel (ECP) web page. The vulnerability is due to Microsoft Exchange Server not randomizing the keys on a per-installation basis resulting in them using the same validationKey and decryptionKey values. With knowledge of these, values an attacker can craft a special viewstate to use an OS command to be executed by NT_AUTHORITY\SYSTEM using .NET deserialization. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker needs to leverage the credentials of an account it had already compromised to authenticate to OWA.

  • Effort: elementary
CVE-2020-17530 Apache Struts RCE

Detects the exploitation of the Apache Struts vulnerability (CVE-2020-17530).

  • Effort: intermediate
CVE-2021-20021 SonicWall Unauthenticated Administrator Access

Detects the exploitation of SonicWall Unauthenticated Admin Access.

  • Effort: advanced
CVE-2021-20023 SonicWall Arbitrary File Read

Detects Arbitrary File Read, which can be used with other vulnerabilities as a mean to obtain outputs generated by attackers, or sensitive data.

  • Effort: advanced
CVE-2021-22893 Pulse Connect Secure RCE Vulnerability

Detects potential exploitation of the authentication by-pass vulnerability that can allow an unauthenticated user to perform remote arbitrary file execution on the Pulse Connect Secure gateway. It is highly recommended to apply the Pulse Secure mitigations and seach for indicators of compromise on affected servers if you are in doubt over the integrity of your Pulse Connect Secure product.

  • Effort: intermediate
Detect requests to Konni C2 servers

This rule detects requests to Konni C2 servers. These patterns come from an analysis done in 2022, September.

  • Effort: elementary
Download Files From Suspicious TLDs

Detects download of certain file types from hosts in suspicious TLDs

  • Effort: master
Koadic MSHTML Command

Detects Koadic payload using MSHTML module

  • Effort: intermediate
Nimbo-C2 User Agent

Nimbo-C2 Uses an unusual User-Agent format in its implants.

  • Effort: intermediate
Possible Malicious File Double Extension

Detects request to potential malicious file with double extension

  • Effort: elementary
Potential Bazar Loader User-Agents

Detects potential Bazar loader communications through the user-agent

  • Effort: elementary
Potential Lemon Duck User-Agent

Detects LemonDuck user agent. The format used two sets of alphabetical characters separated by dashes, for example "User-Agent: Lemon-Duck-[A-Z]-[A-Z]".

  • Effort: elementary
Proofpoint TAP Email Classified As Malware But Allowed

An email was classified as malware with a threat score greater than 0 by Proofpoint TAP but was not blocked. The threshold on the Threat Score has been defined to avoid a high amount of false positives.

  • Effort: advanced
Proofpoint TAP Email Classified As Phishing But Allowed

An email was classified as phishing with a threat score greater than 50 by Proofpoint TAP but was not blocked. The threshold on the Threat Score has been defined to avoid a high amount of false positives.

  • Effort: advanced
Proofpoint TAP Email Classified As Spam But Allowed

An email was classified as spam with a threat score greater than 50 by Proofpoint TAP but was not blocked. The threshold on the Threat Score has been defined to avoid a high amount of false positives.

  • Effort: advanced
ProxyShell Exchange Suspicious Paths

Detects suspicious calls to Exchange resources, in locations related to webshells observed in campaigns using this vulnerability.

  • Effort: elementary
SEKOIA.IO Intelligence Feed

Detect threats based on indicators of compromise (IOCs) collected by SEKOIA's Threat and Detection Research team.

  • Effort: elementary
Suspicious URI Used In A Lazarus Campaign

Detects suspicious requests to a specific URI, usually on an .asp page. The website is often compromised.

  • Effort: intermediate

Event Categories

The following table lists the data source offered by this integration.

Data Source Description
Email gateway Proofpoint TAP inspect, classify and detect threats targetting people through email.

In details, the following table denotes the type of events produced by this integration.

Name Values
Kind event
Category email, network
Type info

Event Samples

Find below few samples of events and how they are normalized by Sekoia.io.

{
    "message": "{\"campaignId\":\"46e01b8a-c899-404d-bcd9-189bb393d1a7\",\"classification\":\"MALWARE\",\"clickIP\":\"192.0.2.1\",\"clickTime\":\"2016-06-24T19:17:44.000Z\",\"GUID\":\"b27dbea0-87d5-463b-b93c-4e8b708289ce\",\"id\":\"8c8b4895-a277-449f-r797-547e3c89b25a\",\"messageID\":\"8c6cfedd-3050-4d65-8c09-c5f65c38da81\",\"recipient\":\"bruce.wayne@pharmtech.zz\",\"sender\":\"9facbf452def2d7efc5b5c48cdb837fa@badguy.zz\",\"senderIP\":\"192.0.2.255\",\"threatID\":\"61f7622167144dba5e3ae4480eeee78b23d66f7dfed970cfc3d086cc0dabdf50\",\"threatTime\":\"2016-06-24T19:17:46.000Z\",\"threatURL\":\"https://threatinsight.proofpoint.com/#/73aa0499-dfc8-75eb-1de8-a471b24a2e75/threat/u/61f7622167144dba5e3ae4480eeee78b23d66f7dfed970cfc3d086cc0dabdf50\",\"threatStatus\":\"active\",\"url\":\"http://badguy.zz/\",\"userAgent\":\"Mozilla/5.0(WindowsNT6.1;WOW64;rv:27.0)Gecko/20100101Firefox/27.0\",\"type\":\"click\",\"status\":\"permitted\"}\n",
    "event": {
        "action": "permitted",
        "category": [
            "network"
        ],
        "dataset": "click",
        "kind": "event",
        "type": [
            "allowed"
        ]
    },
    "@timestamp": "2016-06-24T19:17:44Z",
    "email": {
        "local_id": "b27dbea0-87d5-463b-b93c-4e8b708289ce",
        "message_id": "8c6cfedd-3050-4d65-8c09-c5f65c38da81",
        "sender": {
            "address": [
                "9facbf452def2d7efc5b5c48cdb837fa@badguy.zz"
            ]
        },
        "to": {
            "address": [
                "bruce.wayne@pharmtech.zz"
            ]
        }
    },
    "observer": {
        "product": "Targeted Attack Protection",
        "vendor": "ProofPoint"
    },
    "proofpoint": {
        "tap": {
            "threat": {
                "classifications": [
                    "malware"
                ]
            }
        }
    },
    "related": {
        "ip": [
            "192.0.2.255"
        ]
    },
    "source": {
        "address": "192.0.2.255",
        "ip": "192.0.2.255"
    },
    "threat": {
        "enrichments": [
            {
                "indicator": {
                    "first_seen": "2016-06-24T19:17:46.000Z",
                    "last_seen": "2016-06-24T19:17:46.000Z",
                    "reference": "https://threatinsight.proofpoint.com/#/73aa0499-dfc8-75eb-1de8-a471b24a2e75/threat/u/61f7622167144dba5e3ae4480eeee78b23d66f7dfed970cfc3d086cc0dabdf50",
                    "type": "domain-name",
                    "url": {
                        "original": "http://badguy.zz/"
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    },
    "url": {
        "domain": "badguy.zz",
        "original": "http://badguy.zz/",
        "path": "/",
        "port": 80,
        "scheme": "http",
        "subdomain": "badguy"
    },
    "user_agent": {
        "device": {
            "name": "Other"
        },
        "name": "Firefox",
        "original": "Mozilla/5.0(WindowsNT6.1;WOW64;rv:27.0)Gecko/20100101Firefox/27.0",
        "os": {
            "name": "Windows",
            "version": "NT"
        },
        "version": "27.0"
    }
}
{
    "message": "{\"GUID\":\"c26dbea0-80d5-463b-b93c-4e8b708219ce\",\"status\":\"delivered\",\"type\":\"message\",\"QID\":\"r2FNwRHF004109\",\"ccAddresses\":[\"bruce.wayne@university-of-education.zz\"],\"clusterId\":\"pharmtech_hosted\",\"completelyRewritten\":\"true\",\"fromAddress\":[\"badguy@evil.zz\"],\"headerCC\":\"\\\"Bruce Wayne\\\" <bruce.wayne@university-of-education.zz>\",\"headerFrom\":\"\\\"A. Badguy\\\" <badguy@evil.zz>\",\"headerReplyTo\":null,\"headerTo\":\"\\\"Clark Kent\\\" <clark.kent@pharmtech.zz>; \\\"Diana Prince\\\" <diana.prince@pharmtech.zz>\",\"impostorScore\":0,\"malwareScore\":100,\"messageID\":\"20160624211145.62086.mail@evil.zz\",\"messageParts\":[{\"contentType\":\"text/plain\",\"disposition\":\"inline\",\"filename\":\"text.txt\",\"md5\":\"008c5926ca861023c1d2a36653fd88e2\",\"oContentType\":\"text/plain\",\"sandboxStatus\":\"unsupported\",\"sha256\":\"85738f8f9a7f1b04b5329c590ebcb9e425925c6d0984089c43a022de4f19c281\"},{\"contentType\":\"application/pdf\",\"disposition\":\"attached\",\"filename\":\"Invoice for Pharmtech.pdf\",\"md5\":\"5873c7d37608e0d49bcaa6f32b6c731f\",\"oContentType\":\"application/pdf\",\"sandboxStatus\":\"threat\",\"sha256\":\"2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca\"}],\"messageTime\":\"2016-06-24T21:18:38.000Z\",\"modulesRun\":[\"pdr\",\"sandbox\",\"spam\",\"urldefense\"],\"phishScore\":46,\"policyRoutes\":[\"default_inbound\",\"executives\"],\"quarantineFolder\":\"Attachment Defense\",\"quarantineRule\":\"module.sandbox.threat\",\"recipient\":[\"clark.kent@pharmtech.zz\",\"diana.prince@pharmtech.zz\"],\"replyToAddress\":null,\"sender\":\"e99d7ed5580193f36a51f597bc2c0210@evil.zz\",\"senderIP\":\"192.0.2.255\",\"spamScore\":4,\"subject\":\"Please find a totally safe invoice attached.\",\"threatsInfoMap\":[{\"campaignId\":\"46e01b8a-c899-404d-bcd9-189bb393d1a7\",\"classification\":\"MALWARE\",\"threat\":\"2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca\",\"threatId\":\"2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca\",\"threatStatus\":\"active\",\"threatTime\":\"2016-06-24T21:18:38.000Z\",\"threatType\":\"ATTACHMENT\",\"threatUrl\":\"https://threatinsight.proofpoint.com/#/73aa0499-dfc8-75eb-1de8-a471b24a2e75/threat/u/2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca\"},{\"campaignId\":\"46e01b8a-c899-404d-bcd9-189bb393d1a7\",\"classification\":\"MALWARE\",\"threat\":\"badsite.zz\",\"threatId\":\"3ba97fc852c66a7ba761450edfdfb9f4ffab74715b591294f78b5e37a76481aa\",\"threatTime\":\"2016-06-24T21:18:07.000Z\",\"threatType\":\"url\",\"threatUrl\":\"https://threatinsight.proofpoint.com/#/73aa0499-dfc8-75eb-1de8-a471b24a2e75/threat/u/3ba97fc852c66a7ba761450edfdfb9f4ffab74715b591294f78b5e37a76481aa\"}],\"toAddresses\":[\"clark.kent@pharmtech.zz\",\"diana.prince@pharmtech.zz\"],\"xmailer\":\"Spambot v2.5\"}",
    "event": {
        "action": "delivered",
        "category": [
            "email"
        ],
        "dataset": "message",
        "kind": "event",
        "type": [
            "info"
        ]
    },
    "@timestamp": "2016-06-24T21:18:38Z",
    "email": {
        "attachments": [
            {
                "file": {
                    "hash": {
                        "md5": "008c5926ca861023c1d2a36653fd88e2",
                        "sha256": "85738f8f9a7f1b04b5329c590ebcb9e425925c6d0984089c43a022de4f19c281"
                    },
                    "mime_type": "text/plain",
                    "name": "text.txt"
                }
            },
            {
                "file": {
                    "hash": {
                        "md5": "5873c7d37608e0d49bcaa6f32b6c731f",
                        "sha256": "2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca"
                    },
                    "mime_type": "application/pdf",
                    "name": "Invoice for Pharmtech.pdf"
                }
            }
        ],
        "cc": {
            "address": [
                "bruce.wayne@university-of-education.zz"
            ]
        },
        "from": {
            "address": [
                "badguy@evil.zz"
            ]
        },
        "local_id": "c26dbea0-80d5-463b-b93c-4e8b708219ce",
        "message_id": "20160624211145.62086.mail@evil.zz",
        "sender": {
            "address": [
                "e99d7ed5580193f36a51f597bc2c0210@evil.zz"
            ]
        },
        "subject": "Please find a totally safe invoice attached.",
        "to": {
            "address": [
                "clark.kent@pharmtech.zz",
                "diana.prince@pharmtech.zz"
            ]
        },
        "x_mailer": "Spambot v2.5"
    },
    "observer": {
        "product": "Targeted Attack Protection",
        "vendor": "ProofPoint"
    },
    "proofpoint": {
        "tap": {
            "cluster": {
                "id": "pharmtech_hosted"
            },
            "email": {
                "to": {
                    "address": [
                        "clark.kent@pharmtech.zz",
                        "diana.prince@pharmtech.zz"
                    ]
                }
            },
            "modules": [
                "pdr",
                "sandbox",
                "spam",
                "urldefense"
            ],
            "threat": {
                "classifications": [
                    "malware"
                ],
                "scores": {
                    "impostor": 0,
                    "malware": 100,
                    "phish": 46,
                    "spam": 4
                }
            }
        }
    },
    "related": {
        "ip": [
            "192.0.2.255"
        ]
    },
    "rule": {
        "name": "module.sandbox.threat"
    },
    "source": {
        "address": "192.0.2.255",
        "ip": "192.0.2.255"
    },
    "threat": {
        "enrichments": [
            {
                "indicator": {
                    "file": {
                        "hash": {
                            "sha256": "2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca"
                        }
                    },
                    "first_seen": "2016-06-24T21:18:38.000Z",
                    "last_seen": "2016-06-24T21:18:38.000Z",
                    "reference": "https://threatinsight.proofpoint.com/#/73aa0499-dfc8-75eb-1de8-a471b24a2e75/threat/u/2fab740f143fc1aa4c1cd0146d334c5593b1428f6d062b2c406e5efe8abe95ca",
                    "type": "file"
                }
            },
            {
                "indicator": {
                    "first_seen": "2016-06-24T21:18:07.000Z",
                    "last_seen": "2016-06-24T21:18:07.000Z",
                    "reference": "https://threatinsight.proofpoint.com/#/73aa0499-dfc8-75eb-1de8-a471b24a2e75/threat/u/3ba97fc852c66a7ba761450edfdfb9f4ffab74715b591294f78b5e37a76481aa",
                    "type": "domain-name",
                    "url": {
                        "domain": "badsite.zz"
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Extracted Fields

The following table lists the fields that are extracted, normalized under the ECS format, analyzed and indexed by the parser. It should be noted that infered fields are not listed.

Name Type Description
@timestamp date Date/time when the event originated.
email.attachments array A list of objects describing the attachment files sent along with an email message
email.cc.address keyword The email address of CC recipient
email.from.address keyword The email address of the sender, typically from the RFC 5322 From: header field
email.local_id keyword Unique identifier given to the email by the source that created the event
email.message_id keyword Identifier from the RFC 5322 Message-ID: email header that refers to a particular email message
email.reply_to.address keyword The address that replies should be delivered to based on the value in the RFC 5322 Reply-To: header
email.sender.address keyword Per RFC 5322, specifies the address responsible for the actual transmission of the message
email.subject keyword A brief summary of the topic of the message
email.to.address keyword The email address of recipient
email.x_mailer keyword The mailer that send the message
event.action keyword The action captured by the event.
event.category keyword Event category. The second categorization field in the hierarchy.
event.dataset keyword Name of the dataset.
event.kind keyword The kind of the event. The highest categorization field in the hierarchy.
event.type keyword Event type. The third categorization field in the hierarchy.
observer.product keyword The product name of the observer.
observer.vendor keyword Vendor name of the observer.
proofpoint.tap.cluster.id keyword The name of the cluster which processed the message
proofpoint.tap.email.to.address array The list of recipients from the TO header
proofpoint.tap.modules array The list of modules which processed the message
proofpoint.tap.threat.classifications array The list of classifications of the threat
proofpoint.tap.threat.scores.impostor number The impostor score of the message
proofpoint.tap.threat.scores.malware number The malware score of the message
proofpoint.tap.threat.scores.phish number The phish score of the message
proofpoint.tap.threat.scores.spam number The spam score of the message
rule.name keyword Rule name
source.ip ip IP address of the source.
threat.enrichments array Threat indicators associated to the message
url.original wildcard Unmodified original url as seen in the event source.
user_agent.original keyword Unparsed user_agent string.

Configure

Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection

As a prerequisite, you need to create a service principal and a secret on the setting page:

  • Sign in to the dashboard
  • Go to Settings > Connected Applications
  • Click Create New Credential
  • Type the name of the new credential set
  • Generate the Service Principal and Secret values by clicking Generate

Create the intake

Go to the intake page and create a new intake from the format Proofpoint TAP.

Pull events

Go to the playbook page and create a new playbook with the ProofPoint TAP connector.

Set up the trigger configuration with the service principal, the secret and the intake key. Customize others parameters if needed.

Start the playbook and enjoy your events.