T1684.002: 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.
Enterprise environments can use Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) as an email authentication protocol that references results of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) configurations. SPF and DKIM are configured separately in DNS: SPF verifies that the sending server is authorized for the domain, while DKIM uses a digital signature to verify email integrity and domain authentication. Together, they validate email authenticity and specify how receiving servers should handle authentication failures. Without enforced identity authentication, adversaries may compromise the integrity of an authentication check with altered headers that would not have otherwise passed.[2][3][4]
An example of a weak or absent DMARC policy is `v=DMARC1; p=none; fo=1;`. The `p=none`. The `p=none` indicates no action should be taken, and therefore no filtering action will take place, even if an email fails authentication checks (i.e., SPF and/or DKIM fail). When a DMARC policy indicates no action, the email will still be delivered to the victim’s inbox.[5]
Adversaries have abused weak or absent DMARC policies to circumvent authentication checks and conceal social engineering attempts. Adversaries can alter email headers to include legitimate domain names with fake usernames or impersonate legitimate users via Impersonation for Phishing. Additionally, 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]
Security context for executives and security teams
T1684.002: Email Spoofing describes 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.(Citation: Proofpoint TA427 April 2024) 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. Enterpri...
Executive priority
T1684.002: Email Spoofing is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.
Technical view
Security teams should validate T1684.002: Email Spoofing by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (stealth), supported platforms (Linux, macOS, Office Suite, Windows), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.
Likely telemetry
- Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
- Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry
Detection direction
- Validate whether T1684.002: Email Spoofing appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
- Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
- Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.
Mitigation priorities
- Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
- Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
- Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits
Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.
This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
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.
Enterprise environments can use Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) as an email authentication protocol that references results of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) configurations. SPF and DKIM are configured separately in DNS: SPF verifies that the sending server is authorized for the domain, while DKIM uses a digital signature to verify email integrity and domain authentication. Together, they validate email authenticity and specify how receiving servers should handle authentication failures. Without enforced identity authentication, adversaries may compromise the integrity of an authentication check with altered headers that would not have otherwise passed.[2][3][4]
An example of a weak or absent DMARC policy is `v=DMARC1; p=none; fo=1;`. The `p=none`. The `p=none` indicates no action should be taken, and therefore no filtering action will take place, even if an email fails authentication checks (i.e., SPF and/or DKIM fail). When a DMARC policy indicates no action, the email will still be delivered to the victim’s inbox.[5]
Adversaries have abused weak or absent DMARC policies to circumvent authentication checks and conceal social engineering attempts. Adversaries can alter email headers to include legitimate domain names with fake usernames or impersonate legitimate users via Impersonation for Phishing. Additionally, 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]
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 | Social Engineering | This object subtechnique of Social Engineering. |
| Enterprise | T1672 | Email Spoofing | Email Spoofing revoked by this object. |
All related ATT&CK context
Mitigation direction
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(2)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.2 | 1.0 | Current bundle | db398425c421… | ||
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Older bundle | db398425c421… |
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.
- [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-attackT1684.002Open source URL
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