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How to report a malicious or suspicious email

Phishing messages are mails by which external people try to access authentication data (usernames, passwords) of the staff and students.

Aalto University ITS security requests samples of malicious or suspicious emails arriving at Aalto. These messages usually are scam and phishing and they may contain malware hidden in attachments.

Our goal is to block access to the links provided and teach our junk-email filter to recognize and warn about these messages. Attachments will be checked for malware and possible new findings will be sent to further analysis. For these purposes, we need the original messages as a whole (with full headers, links, and attachments). The easiest way to do this is to send the original message as an attachment directly to the ITS security team ([email protected]). The following describes the procedure with all the Aalto supported email clients.

Your password is only for your own usage.

Sending a message as an attachment with Mac Mail:

  1. in message list view click the sample message with mouse button 2
  2. select ”forward as attachment”
  3. write a short description and add a subject
  4. add recipient as [email protected]
  5. send the message

Sending a message as an attachment with Outlook (Mac & Windows):

  1. start a new message and add recipient as [email protected]
  2. write a short description and add a subject
  3. drag the sample by holding down the left mouse button and  while on top of the new message release the button
  4. send the message (note! you can add multiple samples to the new message)

Sending a message as an attachment with Webmail (outlook.office.com):

  1. start a new message and add recipient as [email protected]
  2. write a short description and add a subject
  3. drag the sample by holding down the left mouse button and  while on top of the new message release the button
  4. send the message (note! you can add multiple samples to the new message)

Sending a message as an attachment with Thunderbird:

  1. in the message list view right-click the sample message
  2. first, select ”forward as” and then ”attachment”
  3. write a short description and add a subject
  4. add recipient as [email protected]
  5. send the message

If the subject of the message starts with [AALTO WARNING: POSSIBLE SPAM] and the message was redirected to the junk-email folder, our spam filter has detected it as spam and we do not require a sample. If you suspect it was a false positive you can always send it to us for analysis and we will report back the findings. While the analysis is pending, it is not recommended to click any links or open attachments in that email message.

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IT Services

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