T1672: Email Spoofing
Adversaries may fake, or spoof, a sender’s identity by modifying the value of relevant email headers in order to establish contact with victims under false pretenses.[1] In addition to actual email content, email headers (such as the FROM header, which contains the email address of the sender) may also be modified. Email clients display these headers when emails appear in a victim's inbox, which may cause modified emails to appear as if they were from the spoofed entity.
This behavior may succeed when the spoofed entity either does not enable or enforce identity authentication tools such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and/or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC).[2][3][4] Even if SPF and DKIM are configured properly, spoofing may still succeed when a domain sets a weak DMARC policy such as `v=DMARC1; p=none; fo=1;`. This means that while DMARC is technically present, email servers are not instructed to take any filtering action when emails fail authentication checks.[1][5]
Adversaries may abuse Microsoft 365’s Direct Send functionality to spoof internal users by using internal devices like printers to send emails without authentication.[6] Adversaries may also abuse absent or weakly configured SPF, SKIM, and/or DMARC policies to conceal social engineering attempts[5] such as Phishing. They may also leverage email spoofing for Impersonation of legitimate external individuals and organizations, such as journalists and academics.[5]
This ATT&CK object is revoked or deprecated in the current MITRE ATT&CK release.
It remains available for historical context and inbound links. Use current ATT&CK relationships and replacement guidance before basing detection or reporting work on this page.
Analyst summary pending validation
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Email Spoofing
Adversaries may fake, or spoof, a sender’s identity by modifying the value of relevant email headers in order to establish contact with victims under false pretenses.[1] In addition to actual email content, email headers (such as the FROM header, which contains the email address of the sender) may also be modified. Email clients display these headers when emails appear in a victim's inbox, which may cause modified emails to appear as if they were from the spoofed entity.
This behavior may succeed when the spoofed entity either does not enable or enforce identity authentication tools such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and/or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC).[2][3][4] Even if SPF and DKIM are configured properly, spoofing may still succeed when a domain sets a weak DMARC policy such as `v=DMARC1; p=none; fo=1;`. This means that while DMARC is technically present, email servers are not instructed to take any filtering action when emails fail authentication checks.[1][5]
Adversaries may abuse Microsoft 365’s Direct Send functionality to spoof internal users by using internal devices like printers to send emails without authentication.[6] Adversaries may also abuse absent or weakly configured SPF, SKIM, and/or DMARC policies to conceal social engineering attempts[5] such as Phishing. They may also leverage email spoofing for Impersonation of legitimate external individuals and organizations, such as journalists and academics.[5]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Related techniques
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1684.002 | Email Spoofing Sub-technique | This object revoked by Email Spoofing. |
All related ATT&CK context
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.1 | Current bundle Revoked | a64dca208872… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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[1]
Proofpoint TA427 April 2024
Lesnewich, G. et al. (2024, April 16). From Social Engineering to DMARC Abuse: TA427’s Art of Information Gathering. Retrieved May 3, 2024.
Open source URL -
[2]
Cloudflare DMARC, DKIM, and SPF
Cloudflare. (n.d.). What are DMARC, DKIM, and SPF?. Retrieved April 8, 2025.
Open source URL -
[3]
DMARC-overview
DMARC. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2025.
Open source URL -
[4]
Proofpoint-DMARC
Proofpoint. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2025.
Open source URL -
[5]
ic3-dprk
FBI, State Department, NSA. (2024, May 2). North Korean Actors Exploit Weak DMARC Security Policies to Mask Spearphishing Efforts. Retrieved April 2, 2025.
Open source URL -
[6]
Barnea DirectSend
Tom Barnea. (2025, September 9). Ongoing Campaign Abuses Microsoft 365’s Direct Send to Deliver Phishing Emails. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
Open source URL -
[7]
mitre-attack T1672Open source URL
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