Systems and methods for performing simulated phishing attacks using social engineering indicators

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10165006-B2
Application number	US-201715662083-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 27, 2017
Priority date	Jan 5, 2017
Publication date	Dec 25, 2018
Grant date	Dec 25, 2018

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for performing simulated phishing attacks using social engineering indicators. One or more failure indicators can be configured in a phishing email template, and each failure indicator can be assigned a description about that failure indicator through use of a markup tag. The phishing email template containing the markup tags corresponding to the failure indicators can be stored and can be used to generate a simulated phishing email in which the one or more markup tags are removed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for configuring a simulated phishing email with one or more failure indicators, the method comprising:
a) receiving, via an editing tool, selection of a phishing email template from a plurality of phishing email templates for configuring a simulated phishing email;
b) receiving, via the editing tool, specification of one or more failure indicators to be configured in the phishing email template, each of the one or more failure indicators assigned a flag and a description on how to identify that type of social engineering indicator, wherein a failure indicator of the one or more failure indicators is configured to be displayed in one of a pop up box or overlay user interface responsive to a pointer hovering over the flag;
c) generating, by the editing tool, a markup tag that is included in the phishing email template for each of the one or more failure indicators, the markup tag comprising a first attribute to describe the flag assigned to a social engineering indicator;
d) storing, by the editing tool, source code of the phishing email template with one or more markup tags corresponding to the one or more failure indicators; and
e) generating, by the editing tool, a simulated phishing email to be sent to one or more email accounts based on the phishing email template by removing the one or more markup tags.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein (a) further comprises selecting, via the editing tool, to create a custom phishing email template.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more failure indicators is selected from a category of the following categories: sender, subject, content, attachment, link and overall.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein (c) further comprises generating the markup tag to be included in one of a field of the phishing email template or a body of the phishing email template.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein (c) further comprises generating the markup tag to be one of self-terminating or to encapsulate one of text or an image.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein (c) further comprises generating the markup tag to be a hypertext markup language tag comprising a predetermined name and one or more attributes to specify how the flag is to be displayed.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein (e) further comprising associating the simulated phishing email with the stored phishing email template.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein (e) further comprises generating the simulated phishing email to include a link to a display of a copy of the simulated phishing email, based on the phishing email template, with the one or more flags of the markup tags shown.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the copy of the simulated phishing email is configured to display the one or more failure indicators of the simulated phishing email template in one of a pop up box or overlay user interface responsive to a pointer hovering over the flag.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the simulated phishing email is configured not to display the one or more failure indicators.

11. A system for configuring a simulated phishing email with one or more failure indicators, the system comprising:
an editing tool executable on a hardware processor, the hardware processor coupled to memory and configured to:
receive a selection of a phishing email template from a plurality of phishing email templates for configuring a simulated phishing email and specification of one or more failure indicators to be configured in the phishing email template, each of the one or more failure indicators assigned a flag and a description on how to identify that type of failure indicator, wherein a failure indicator of the one or more failure indicators is configured to be displayed in one of a pop up box or overlay user interface responsive to a pointer hovering over the flag;
generate a markup tag that is included in the phishing email template for each of the one or more failure indicators, the markup tag comprising a first attribute to describe the flag assigned to a failure indicator;
store source code of the phishing email template with one or more markup tags corresponding to the one or more failure indicators; and
generate a simulated phishing email to be sent to one or more email accounts based on the phishing email template by removing the one or more markup tags.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the editing tool is configured to create a custom phishing email template.

13. The system of claim 11 , wherein the flag for the one or more failure indicators is selected from a category of the following categories: sender, subject, content, attachment, link and overall.

14. The system of claim 11 , wherein the markup tag is generated to be included in one of a field of the phishing email template or a body of the phishing email template.

15. The system of claim 11 , wherein the markup tag is configured to be one of self-terminating or to encapsulate one of text or an image.

16. The system of claim 11 , wherein the markup tag comprises a hypertext markup language tag with a predetermined name and one or more attributes to specify how the flag is to be displayed.

17. The system of claim 11 , wherein the simulated phishing email is associated with the stored phishing email template.

18. The system of claim 11 , wherein the simulated phishing email includes a link to a uniform resource locator comprising a display of a copy of the simulated phishing email, based on the phishing email template, with the one or more flags of the markup tags shown.

19. The system of claim 18 , wherein the copy of the simulated phishing email is configured to display the one or more failure indicators of the phishing email template in one of a pop up box or overlay user interface responsive to a pointer hovering over the flag.

20. The system of claim 11 , wherein the simulated phishing email is configured not to display the one or more failure indicators.

Assignees

• Knowbe4 Inc

Inventors

• Irimie Alin
• Kras Greg
• Austin David
• Dalton Benjamin

Classifications

• G06F40/186

  Templates · CPC title

• H04L63/1483 Primary

  service impersonation, e.g. phishing, pharming or web spoofing (detection of rogue wireless access points H04W12/12) · CPC title

• H04L63/1433

  Vulnerability analysis · CPC title

• H04L51/18 Primary

  Commands or executable codes · CPC title

• G06F17/248

  Physics · mapped topic