In connection with the generation of simulated phishing emails, the system can be configured to insert a message in a person's inbox during a time-based window while the person is active in the mailbox. For example, it can be configured as a service that can inject phishing simulation emails to user's mailbox when the user is actively working in his mailbox.
Simulation data for use in this context is stored in a data store. Simulation data can include information sufficient to create a simulated phishing message. The simulation data can include, as non-limiting examples, header information and message body information. A management interface can be provided to an administrator for the purpose of creating the simulated phishing messages from the simulation data, as well as managing the simulation data.
The system can provide the simulated phishing email messages to users by inserting them directly into user accounts. The system can store a database of user account names, in the format of “user@host.com”. These user accounts may be part of an enterprise mail service, such as Microsoft Exchange. Using an administrative account, the system can connect to the enterprise mail service and issue a command to insert the email message directly into an account associated with a user.
In some embodiments interfacing with Microsoft Exchange, the Exchange server may expose and application programming interface (API) which allows an external service to issue commands to insert messages. As a non-limiting example, in the case of Microsoft Exchange, a domain administrator may grant account impersonation rights to the external simulation service, so that the external simulation service can connect to the Exchange service and insert emails into that account.
User Account Control and Impersonation