Allow List for Campaign Emails
When you run a Security Awareness Training email campaign, emails are sent to your domain. These emails might be classified as suspicious by email security systems. To ensure that Security Awareness Training campaign emails reach their intended recipients, you may need to add Security Awareness Training campaign email domains to the Allow lists in your email security systems.
If you are not setting up with Microsoft 365 or using Barracuda Email Gateway Defense, meet with your email security system vendor or administrator to have them allow the Security Awareness Training campaign email domains or the IP addresses for the Security Awareness Training mail servers. If you decide to allow by domain, include the email server domain you select when you configure the domain.
Emails coming from standard Security Awareness Training servers to your organization will originate from one or more of the IP addresses in this address range. Allow these IP addresses for the Security Awareness Training email servers on your email security system or service:
3.145.232.16/28
All SMTP servers sending emails for Barracuda-supplied domains identify themselves in the Received header as mail.spearphish.com. Barracuda recommends that you check only the spearphish.com domain if you are allow listing by the Received header. The spearphish.com domain should only be in the two oldest Received headers. Here is an example of Received headers:
Received: from mail.spearphish.com (3.145.232.yy) by xxx.xxx.xxx (NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN) …; Wed, 3 Feb 2022 11:15:05 +0000
Note: yy above could be any number from 16 to 23.
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.spearphish.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id NNNNNNNNNN for <xxxx@example.com>; Wed, 3 Feb 2022 05:15:05 -0600 (CST)
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN) is the host name and IP address of the receiving mail server. NNNNNNNNN is a numeric ESMTP id.
The message Return-Path header will be set to reply_xxxxxxxxxx@[from domain], where xxxxxxxxx is replaced with a random identifier and the From domain will be replaced with one of the domains specified in the campaign’s email accounts. Note that some mail gateways and mail servers might strip the Return-Path header before it reaches the user’s mailbox. If you plan to use the Return-Path header, you must confirm that the header is not stripped before it reaches the user’s mailbox.
10 mail.spearphish.com (3.145.232.16, 3.145.232.17)
Please update any mail host references to use 3.145.232.16 and 3.145.232.17 IPs. To be safe they should include the entire bocks of IP addresses:
3.145.232.16/28 (aka 3.145.232.16-23)
Note: You can also configure the system to use third-party SMTP email servers for some campaigns. This is a non-standard option that requires additional allow list details.
Microsoft 365 Defender
Microsoft 365 Defender often blocks phishing messages, including legitimate, simulated phishing attacks used for training from Barracuda. You can configure it to allow campaign emails and avoid machine clicks on links within campaign emails.
For additional information and full instructions, refer to Using Microsoft 365 Defender with Security Awareness Training.
Microsoft Edge Browser
The Edge browser may block Security Awareness Training campaign landing pages. To learn more and prevent this from occurring, see Preventing the Microsoft Edge Browser from Blocking Landing Pages.
Google Safe Browsing Initiative
This Google policy might block Security Awareness Training phishing domains that you want to use in your campaigns.
To remove this Google block on one or more Barracuda phishing domains, add the blocked domains to the SafeBrowsingAllowlistDomains parameter of Chrome's Enterprise Policy configuration.
For full instructions, refer to Disabling Google Safe Browsing Warning Message Using Group Policy.
Additional Best Practices
The following sections describe additional methods of optimizing your setup of Security Awareness Training, but they are not required.
Landing Page Server Allow List
When users click a link within a campaign message, they are directed to an HTTP or HTTPS Landing Page server. The IP addresses of the Landing Page servers include those in this range:
3.145.232.16/28
You can also allow based on the domain name used for each campaign.
Administrative Web Application Allow List
Administrative functions are available using encrypted SSL/TLS at https://phishline.com hosted at one of the IPs in the following address range:
3.145.232.16/28
We strongly recommend you use Single Sign-On (SSO) for all administrative users.
Educational Content and Survey / Content Delivery Network Allow List
Barracuda's Security Awareness Training servers are located in the Midwest region of the United States. With our worldwide customers, there is always a concern about reducing latency and bandwidth delays when showing educational videos. To solve that, Barracuda can distribute the read-only multimedia content using a reputable Content Delivery Network (CDN). For security reasons, training content is only delivered via HTTPS.
To create an allow list for educational content and surveys, use the following:
https://phishline.com
https://*.phishline.com
https://fonts.googleapis.com
https://fonts.gstatic.com
Note: The CDN option is only used to distribute the Image Gallery components including MP4, WEBM, JPG, GIF, and similar file types. Barracuda recommends you allow list requests and responses for static multimedia content only. The web application and data collection are exclusively performed on the Security Awareness Training servers even with the CDN option.
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Landing Page “Enable Local IP Detection”
There are two methods to enable detection of the local/non?natted IP address of a browser.
Enable Local IP Detection
To enable JavaScript/Java Local IP Detection Logic, navigate to Campaigns > Landing Pages > Landing Page Manager, and select the Enable Local IP Detection check box. Note that this setting is disabled by default to minimize the chances that users would receive JavaScript, Java, or other errors/warnings on landing pages.
When you enable local IP detection, each web page might attempt to create a WebRTC connection using stun:stun.services.mozilla.com. Be advised that Barracuda does not control this server. Upon request, Barracuda can provide firewalled access to our hosted stun/RFC 3489 service. If you choose to block access to any/all stun services, the other techniques will be attempted, such as using a custom Java applet. This technique can help augment the data collected for Portable Media Campaigns, where no user information can be associated with the Smart Attachment.
X_FORWARDED_FOR Headers
If you do not want to Enable Local IP Detection on a landing page, you can use industry-standard X_FORWARDED_FOR headers. Configure your proxy/NAT firewall to provide these headers. Depending on your network and risk environment, you might be able to configure it to selectively send those headers to the Barracuda web servers rather than sharing with all sites.
Mail Transport Routing
Barracuda strongly recommends a direct mail connection to your email server. This eliminates issues with antivirus/antispam filtering services. These filtering services can cause false clicks or block mock phishing emails entirely if they are not configured properly to allow the emails coming from the Barracuda email servers. Using a mail transport to directly route emails from the PhishLine email servers to your mail server eliminates these issues. To implement mail transport routing, Barracuda needs direct access to TCP port 25 on your email server's external IP. This usually requires a new firewall rule on your company firewall that allows this direct connection. The only other requirement is to provide Barracuda with your mail server’s public host name or public IP address.
Email Address Allow List
You might also combine the above allow list techniques with email account-specific rules based on the addresses used to send out each campaign. For example, you might choose to add noreply@neverclick.net to your safe senders list using Group Policy to facilitate delivery of campaign emails directly to user inboxes. Be sure to combine this type of allow listing with IP/DKIM/SPF allow listing. You do not want to allow list a domain or account only to open the door to real attackers. It is also a best practice to disable all allow list settings upon campaign completion.
Gmail Customers
Refer to this support link.
As a Google Workspace administrator, you can help ensure that messages received from specific sending IP addresses do not get marked as spam. Do this by adding the addresses to an email allow list in your Google Admin console. When you create an email allow list for your Google Workspace account, it affects your entire domain. You cannot create email allow lists that apply to specific organizational units. See other settings you might use instead.
Other Usage Considerations
Malicious Code: Barracuda will never intentionally send you malware. Therefore, there is no reason to ever allow list antivirus or other malicious code filters. It is an important layer of protection you should keep in place.
Timing: If you are using domain-based or email-account-based allow listing, you will likely want to limit those to the duration of your campaign. Otherwise, you could enable real attackers to misuse your allow list in the future.
Domain Name: Each campaign lists the domain names that will be used to deliver your campaign content. Some administrators prefer to allow list by domain instead of IP. Be sure to take measures to prevent real attackers from exploiting those allow listed domain names for real attacks.
Email Accounts: Each campaign lists all of the email accounts that will be used to deliver your campaign content.
Web Pages: Each campaign lists the web page servers. If you choose to use the Content Delivery Network acceleration for Multimedia Content, you must add
media.phishline.comas a domain name.Message Content: Many filters examine actual message content. Within the message template editor, Security Awareness Training also provides a spam filtering score based on a popular antispam solution. To ensure delivery of messages, each campaign allows you to send test emails, so you can test the delivery of the messages and replies, while also confirming that the landing page links work.
Additional Help
If you have any questions about using allow lists, contact Barracuda Technical Support.
You can also allow list Security Awareness Training for Barracuda Email Security Gateway.