Setting Up Integrations

Forensic Email Intelligence (FEI) supports several external API integrations to enable IP address, domain, URL, and email address intelligence. The integrations are optional—if you do not configure them, those options will simply be unavailable.

You can access the Integration Settings page within FEI’s Settings View via the ⚙️ Settings icon on the Startup Page or in FEI Viewer.

MaxMind

FEI uses the GeoIP2 Precision Services from MaxMind. You can obtain an API key for this service below:

https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-precision-insights

Once you create your account and purchase credits, visit the Account > License Keys page and create a new license key for FEI. You will need to supply your Account/User ID (an integer value found on the License Keys page) as well as your license key to activate the integration.

Important Note

Activation of new license keys by MaxMind can take a few minutes. During this time, you would get an authentication error if you attempt to use the license key with FEI.

SecurityTrails

FEI uses SecurityTrails API for historical mail exchanger (MX) records as well as subdomain lookups. You can set up an account with SecurityTrails below:

https://securitytrails.com/corp/pricing#api

Once you create an account, visit the API > API Keys menu and click the Create New API Key button to create an API key for FEI. You will need to supply this API key to FEI to activate the SecurityTrails integration.

EmailRep by Sublime Security

FEI uses this API for the enrichment of email addresses. You can create an account below:

https://emailrep.io/key

urlscan by urlscan GmbH

FEI uses urlscan to get intelligence data on URLs. You can create an account with urlscan below:

https://urlscan.io/user/signup

Once you create your account, visit the User > Settings & API > API Keys section (direct link) and click the +Create new API key button to create an API key for FEI.

Note

FEI currently executes urlscan API requests as private scans using urlscan’s US servers. If you have a different requirement, please send us a note or create a feature request.

VirusTotal

FEI uses this API for the enrichment of email attachments. You can create an account below:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/join-us

By default, performing a VirusTotal scan with FEI causes FEI to hash the attachment, and then search the attachment hash in VirusTotal’s database without uploading the attachment contents to VirusTotal.

An additional option is provided which controls whether VirusTotal uploads are available.

When activated (as in the screenshot above), FEI displays an upload button if an attachment’s hash is not found in VirusTotal’s database. Pressing the Upload to VT button results in the attachment’s contents’ being uploaded to VirusTotal for analysis.

Comparison Tool (Local)

The local diff tool integration allows FEI to launch two files side by side in the external diff tool for comparative analysis. You can activate this integration by specifying the file path to the executable of a locally-installed comparison (diff) tool such as Beyond Compare. The diff tool should accept two command-line arguments as the full paths of the files to be compared.

Once this integration is activated, an additional context menu item will be enabled in the Evidence Grid that appears as follows:

Note

Comparison using an external diff tool is only available for directly-accessible item types such as EML, MSG, and Mbox files as well as FEC projects with item-level output. It is not available for container-accessible items such as OST and PST files as the external diff tool would not be able to access the specific message within the container for comparison.

That said, FEI’s MAPI comparison feature is available for MSG, OST, and PST files and provides a side-by-side comparison of the MAPI properties of the items, which is often much more useful than a binary comparison.

External APIs and Data Privacy

When you choose to enrich a data point such as an IP address, domain name, URL, or email address via FEI, FEI sends that specific data point to the corresponding API and gets an API response. It does not send the entirety of the email message where the data point was found. In our experience, querying IP addresses, domain names, URLs, or email addresses against external APIs does not typically raise privacy concerns. If your case requires that these data points be kept secret, consider disabling the corresponding API integrations in FEI.

When Is External API Enrichment Performed?

FEI performs enrichment operations when you specifically click on a data point and initiate a query in FEI Viewer. External enrichments are not triggered when FEI automatically ingests, extracts, and scores multiple documents in a batch process through ingestion.

Caching

FEI caches external enrichment results when reasonably feasible to prevent querying the same data point multiple times within a short time window and expending API credits unnecessarily. Query results contain an indicator that shows when the live data was retrieved from the corresponding API.