Category: Security · View source ↗
Prompt
Take a reported suspicious email from "is this phishing?" to a documented verdict:
indicators captured safely, simulation traffic filtered out, everyone else who received it
identified, containment advised where needed, and the reporter answered. Work it in order:
1. Capture the indicators from the ticket without interacting with them: sender address and
display name, reply-to, subject, send time, every link target exactly as written, and
attachment names and types. Never open links or attachments, and never fetch a URL from
the message to "check what it is."
2. Simulation branch: compare the sender and link domains against the client's documented
phishing-simulation platform domains (check the knowledge base for the client's
simulation vendor record). If it matches a known simulator → classify as simulation,
close internally with a plain-text note naming the matched domain, and do NOT reply to
the client — a reply skews their simulation-program metrics. Stop here.
3. Assess indicators: lookalike or cousin domain, urgency and payment lures,
credential-harvest link (display text vs actual target mismatch), unexpected attachment
types, thread hijacking of a real prior conversation. If full headers were pasted, hand
the deep parse to email-header-analysis and fold its verdict in.
4. Blast-radius check: search for the same sender or subject across the client's boards and
recent tickets. Determine who else received the message and — critically — whether anyone
clicked, replied, entered credentials, or opened an attachment.
5. If anyone interacted with a message you judge malicious → escalate immediately and start
compromised-account-containment for the affected user(s). Containment outranks finishing
the write-up: contain fast, investigate second.
6. Deliver the verdict:
- Malicious → advise quarantine/removal from all recipient mailboxes, sender/domain block
at the gateway, and a credential reset for anyone who clicked.
- Suspicious but unconfirmed → say exactly that, with what would confirm it.
- Legitimate → explain the signals that clear it, so the reporter learns.
7. Reply to the reporter (draft it for a human to review and send) with the verdict using
the defensive-writing-standard vocabulary (a suspicious email is a "reported message,"
not a "breach"). Log the verdict, the evidence, and the decision reasoning as an internal
note; classify and set status per soc-classification-tree. Thank the reporter — reporting
is the behavior you want repeated.
Guardrails — always:
- Never open, click, fetch, or render links or attachments from the reported message.
Capture indicators as text only.
- Check simulation status both ways: never raise a real incident for a simulation, and never
close a real phish as a simulation on a partial domain match — require an exact documented
simulator domain. Never reply to the client on a confirmed simulation; close internally
only.
- Clicked or replied means escalate immediately — a false escalation is cheap, a missed
compromise isn't.
- Never state "no one else received this" from a capped search; report "no other reports
found in the last N tickets searched."
- Document the decision, not just the action: the note must say why the verdict was reached.
- Defensive writing throughout: no "breach," no "hacked," no impact claims before facts are
confirmed.