Adversaries may target user email to collect sensitive information. Emails may contain sensitive data, including trade secrets or personal information, that can prove valuable to adversaries. Adversaries can collect or forward email from mail servers or clients.
View in MITRE ATT&CK®Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
AC-16 | Security and Privacy Attributes | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
AC-17 | Remote Access | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
AC-19 | Access Control for Mobile Devices | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
AC-20 | Use of External Systems | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
AC-03 | Access Enforcement | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
AC-04 | Information Flow Enforcement | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
CM-02 | Baseline Configuration | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
CM-06 | Configuration Settings | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
IA-02 | Identification and Authentication (organizational Users) | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
IA-05 | Authenticator Management | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
SC-07 | Boundary Protection | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
SI-12 | Information Management and Retention | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
SI-04 | System Monitoring | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
SI-07 | Software, Firmware, and Information Integrity | Protects | T1114 | Email Collection | |
PUR-AS-E5 | Audit Solutions | Technique Scores | T1114 | Email Collection |
Comments
Microsoft Purview auditing solutions provide an integrated solution to help organizations effectively respond to security events, forensic investigations, internal investigations, and compliance obligations. Thousands of user and admin operations performed in dozens of Microsoft 365 services and solutions are captured, recorded, and retained in your organization's unified audit log. Audit records for these events are searchable by security ops, IT admins, insider risk teams, and compliance and legal investigators in your organization. This capability provides visibility into the activities performed across your Microsoft 365 organization.
Microsoft's Audit Solutions protects from Email Collection attacks due to in an Exchange environment, Administrators can use Get-InboxRule to discover and remove potentially malicious auto-forwarding rules.
License Requirements:
Microsoft 365 E3 and E5
References
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EOP-MFR-E3 | Mail Flow Rules | Technique Scores | T1114 | Email Collection |
Comments
In Exchange Online Protection (EOP) organizations without Exchange Online mailboxes can use Exchange Mail Flow Rules (also known as transport rules) to look for specific conditions on messages that pass through your organization and take action on them. Mail Flow Rules take action on messages while they are in transit, not after the message is delivered to the mailbox. Mail flow rules contain a richer set of conditions, exceptions, and actions, which provides you with the flexibility to implement many types of messaging policies.
Mail Flow Rules protects from Email Collection attacks due to the custom rules feature which allows you to define rules to encrypt email messages which provides an added layer of security to sensitive information sent over email.
License Requirements:
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, Defender for Office 365 plan 1 and plan 2, Microsoft XDR
References
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ME-CAE-E3 | Conditional Access Evaluation | Technique Scores | T1114 | Email Collection |
Comments
Entra ID's continuous access evaluation is a security control implemented by enabling services to subscribe to critical Microsoft Entra events. Those events can then be evaluated and enforced near real time. This process enables tenant users lose access to organizational SharePoint Online files, email, calendar, or tasks, and Teams from Microsoft 365 client apps within minutes after a critical event is detected. The following events are currently evaluated:
User Account is deleted or disabled
Password for a user is changed or reset
Multifactor authentication is enabled for the user
Administrator explicitly revokes all refresh tokens for a user
High user risk detected by Microsoft Entra ID Protection
License Requirements:
Continuous access evaluation will be included in all versions of Microsoft 365.
References
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DEF-SecScore-E3 | Secure Score | Technique Scores | T1114 | Email Collection |
Comments
Microsoft Secure Score is a measurement of an organization's security posture, with a higher number indicating more recommended actions taken. It can be found at Microsoft Secure Score in the Microsoft Defender portal.
Following the Secure Score recommendations can protect your organization from threats. From a centralized dashboard in the Microsoft Defender portal, organizations can monitor and work on the security of their Microsoft 365 identities, apps, and devices. Your score is updated in real time to reflect the information presented in the visualizations and recommended action pages. Secure Score also syncs daily to receive system data about your achieved points for each action.
To help you find the information you need more quickly, Microsoft recommended actions are organized into groups:
Identity (Microsoft Entra accounts & roles)
Device (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, known as Microsoft Secure Score for Devices)
Apps (email and cloud apps, including Office 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps)
Data (through Microsoft Information Protection)
References
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DEF-AIR-E5 | Automated Investigation and Response | Technique Scores | T1114 | Email Collection |
Comments
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 includes powerful automated investigation and response (AIR) capabilities that can save your security operations team time and effort. As alerts are triggered, it's up to your security operations team to review, prioritize, and respond to those alerts. Keeping up with the volume of incoming alerts can be overwhelming. Automating some of those tasks can help.
AIR enables your security operations team to operate more efficiently and effectively. AIR capabilities include automated investigation processes in response to well-known threats that exist today. Appropriate remediation actions await approval, enabling your security operations team to respond effectively to detected threats. With AIR, your security operations team can focus on higher-priority tasks without losing sight of important alerts that are triggered. Examples include: Soft delete email messages or clusters, Block URL (time-of-click), Turn off external mail forwarding, Turn off delegation, etc.
Required licenses
E5 or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 licenses.
References
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DO365-ATH-E5 | Advanced Threat Hunting | Technique Scores | T1114 | Email Collection |
Comments
Advanced hunting is a query-based threat hunting tool that lets you explore up to 30 days of raw data. Advanced hunting in Microsoft Defender XDR allows you to proactively hunt for threats across: Devices managed by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Emails processed by Microsoft 365, Cloud app activities, authentication events, and domain controller activities. With this level of visibility, you can quickly hunt for threats that traverse sections of your network, including sophisticated intrusions that arrive on email or the web, elevate local privileges, acquire privileged domain credentials, and move laterally to across your devices. Advanced hunting supports two modes, guided and advanced. Users use advanced mode if they are comfortable using Kusto Query Language (KQL) to create queries from scratch.
Advanced Threat Hunting Detects Email Collection attacks due to the IdentityLogonEvents table in the advanced hunting schema which contains information about all authentication activities related to Microsoft online services captured by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps which monitors for unusual login activity from unknown or abnormal locations, especially for privileged accounts.
License Requirements:
Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 2
References
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Technique ID | Technique Name | Number of Mappings |
---|---|---|
T1114.001 | Local Email Collection | 8 |
T1114.003 | Email Forwarding Rule | 16 |
T1114.002 | Remote Email Collection | 19 |