Phishing Interaction Validation

1. Prerequisites

• User identity (email / username)
• Email indicators (URLs, timestamp)
• Email logs
• Identity provider logs (Okta, Azure AD, Google)
• Proxy / web logs
• Endpoint telemetry (optional)
• User confirmation (if available)

Required Tools:

• IdP: Okta / Azure AD / Google Workspace
• Email platform: Message trace / click tracking
• Proxy / network logs: Zscaler, Netskope, etc.
• SIEM / log platform

2. Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Check Email Interaction (Click Activity):

   • Query email security logs
     • Link click events
     • Time of Click Validate:
     • Which URL was accessed and how many times.

2. Confirm Web Access:

   • Check proxy / DNS logs:
     • Did user resolve or connect to phishing domain?
   • Validate:
     • IP address
     • Timestamp alignment with email delivery

3. Identify Credential Submission:

   • Indicators:
     • Access to known credential harvesting page
     • POST requests to suspicious endpoints
   • If available:
     • Inspect sandbox results from URL analysis

4. Analyse Identity Provider Logs:

   • Look for:
     • Login attempts shortly after click
     • Successful login from:
       • New IP / geolocation
       • Unusual device
     • MFA events:
       • Push approvals
       • MFA fatigue patterns

5. Check for Active Sessions:

   • Identify:
     • Existing active sessions
     • Token usage across services
   • Look for:
     • API usage spikes
     • SaaS access anomalies

6. 6.6 User Verification (if needed):

   • Contact user:
     • Did they click?
     • Did they enter credentials?
   • Cross-check with logs (do not rely solely on user memory)

3. Post-Action

• Document findings within the incident ticket

Contributor

Vishal Thakur GitHub: https://github.com/malienist

Jayden Vo GitHub: https://github.com/jayden-vo

Contributed to the Arcana Incident Response Documentation Framework.