In this final post of the DMARC series we’ll discuss the latest crypto updates to DKIM known as the DKIM Crypto Update (DCRUP) to strengthen DKIM. Picking the Lock While DKIM has been around for many years as one of the foundations of DMARC , weaknesses in the security of its signatures have limited its effectiveness. The DCRUP Working Group was created to update DKIM to handle more modern...

One of the biggest challenges for a security strategy is making it accessible and understandable for end-users. Thanks to this, one of the most widely used identity verification measures is the straight-forward two-factor authentication (2FA) approach, where the user is sent a unique code to prove who they are. 2FA has been especially popular via SMS text message, as even the oldest, clunkiest...

As we mentioned in the first post of this series, with the arrival of ARC, one of the biggest blockers to DMARC adoption up to now has been the inability to use it with mailing lists or forwarders. This limitation existed because messages delivered through 3rd party handlers would not pass DKIM or SPF (or both). This meant that in the past one either didn’t enforce DMARC or suffered the...

Agari has been working diligently to stop the abuse of email since its founding in 2009. By driving increased adoption of DMARC email authentication, Agari (and the industry as a whole) has made it much harder for criminals and other bad actors to forge email identity. DMARC has been a key part of this success and its importance continues to grow — for validation of this refer to the recent...

Recent research conducted by Agari showed that Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are running rampant with 96% of organizations experiencing an attack during the second half of 2017. To compile the report, Agari analyzed over 1 billion emails that were considered safe by conventional security technologies. Our analysis showed that BEC was one of the predominant methods used by cyber criminals...

The first deadline for the Department of Homeland Security Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01 has passed and 63 percent of federal agencies have deployed DMARC, up from 18% when the directive was announced three months ago. BOD 18-01 was announced by DHS Assistant Secretary of Cybersecurity and Communications Jeanette Manfra on October 14, 2017. The mandate requires federal domains to...

The Department of Homeland Security binding directive (BOD 18-01) outlines several milestones that agencies must meet in order to show progress and, ultimately, compliance with the directive. The first of those milestones (due on November 15 th , 2017) is to create an Agency Plan of Action for BOD 18-01 outlining how the agency would implement the requirements of the directive and meet its...

On October 16, 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01 that mandates the implementation of specific security standards to strengthen email and website security among government agencies. As part of this DHS mandate, all federal agencies that operate .gov email domains must implement a DMARC “monitor” policy within 90 days and must progress to...

If you are in the email business, the big story today is Mailsploit, a collection of email client bugs that threatens to undermine DMARC and render Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) obsolete. In other words, the end of the world is upon us, and we should all go back to using smoke signals or march forward and find a replacement for email. Before we all become tinfoil milliners, let’s take a step back...

Are you ready for Binding Operational Directive 18-01? On October 16, 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued this directive in order to implement better security protocols on government emails. The DHS BOD 18-01 is a compulsory directive to all federal departments and agencies. Among the measures mandated in BOD 18-01 is a requirement that federal agencies adopt Domain-based...

As with all great internships, I started this summer at Agari being delightfully bombarded with various acronyms and different technologies to learn. But though there was such a wealth of new information, within weeks, I found myself making real contributions to the product and essentially being treated as a full-time engineer. I came into this 10-week internship after my junior year at U.C...

Are you sending Google Calendar invites and not getting replies, or maybe your invitees tell you they tried to reply and it was blocked? Or maybe you are trying reply to Google Calendar invites and being blocked saying the mail is not accepted due to your domain's DMARC policy? This is an issue I have been seeing, so I did some digging and I have figured out what is going on. Before I get to the...

Every year, more than 5 million homes are bought and sold in the U.S. Given this volume, it should come as no surprise that the real estate industry is a prime target for email-based crimes. Cyber criminals are spoofing (and in some cases taking over) the email accounts of real estate agents, title companies, and others involved in the home buying process. Once the criminal gains access, he or she...

Companies are flocking to Office 365 as the leading choice of cloud-based email. But while it’s a great productivity enhancer and provides simplicity and cost savings over on-premises solutions, it raises serious security challenges. Threat actors typically target email accounts with identity deception. And with Office 365 being ubiquitous and publicly-discoverable, the risks become even greater...

We are delighted to announce that Agari is among the suppliers listed on the UK Government’s G-Cloud 9 framework. Agari will now be able to provide its award-winning DMARC Email Authentication service, Agari Customer Protect, to UK public sector organisations through the Government’s secure online store, the Digital Marketplace. Agari Customer Protect is listed in the the Software-as-a-Service...

Today, cybercriminals launched a highly effective email scam that included a link to a Google Docs document that was in fact a link to a 3rd party app designed to steal information from the recipient. Worse, the email appears to come from someone known to the victim. Based on information from the Agari Trust Network, we saw more than 3,016 organizations compromised that sent 23,838 emails to Agari...

In my previous blog post , I introduced the concept of open quarantine. This week, I’d like to explore the two phases of email filtering that make up the open quarantine process. Phase 1 - Tripartite Classification The notion of open quarantine depends on being able to perform a tripartite classification of messages into good , bad and undetermined , where the first two categories have a close to...

In my previous blog post , I provided examples of the growing sophistication – and subsequent success – of several high-visibility email attacks that used social engineering to evade traditional email security filters. This week, I’d like to introduce a new filtering paradigm: open quarantine. Open quarantine balances the needs of security and usability using a two-phase email filtering process...

In my previous blog post, I provided examples of the growing sophistication – and subsequent success – of several high-visibility email attacks. This week, I’d like to look at the different types of emails that are enabling these attacks. Deceptive emails are used by cyberattackers to carry out three different types of attacks: To coerce the recipient to follow a hyperlink to a website...

One of the things that often stumps even the most security conscious companies is knowing all the third-party email service providers they are working with. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible for these organizations to protect their customers from phishing attacks if they don’t even know who is sending legitimate email on their behalf. And this gets even more challenging when you...