Performing Red Team Phishing With Gophish

When to Use

• When conducting security assessments that involve performing red team phishing with gophish
• When following incident response procedures for related security events
• When performing scheduled security testing or auditing activities
• When validating security controls through hands-on testing

Most Often Missed & How to Confirm

• Mail never lands (the silent campaign killer): a campaign that "launched" with 0 opens usually means delivery failed, not that users were vigilant. Before blaming awareness, confirm deliverability — SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment on the sending domain, no Spamhaus/Barracuda listing, and that the gateway didn't quarantine. Send one seed email to a controlled inbox and inspect headers (Authentication-Results: spf=pass dkim=pass).
• Sending Profile misconfig: wrong SMTP host/port/auth, or a "From" that fails DMARC, gets silently junked. Use GoPhish's "Send Test Email" on the sending profile and confirm receipt before importing the target group.
• Tracking pixel / landing page unreachable from the victim network: opens and clicks only register if the phish server URL resolves and is reachable externally (valid TLS cert, not blocked by web proxy). Confirm by clicking the link yourself from off-network and watching the event appear in the campaign timeline.
• Captured creds not recorded: the landing page needs Capture Submitted Data (and Capture Passwords) enabled plus a valid redirect, or submissions show as clicks only. Submit a test credential and verify it appears under campaign results.
• Don't conclude "low click rate = secure": a 0% result with unverified delivery, DNS, and capture settings is an instrumentation failure, not a clean bill of health. Confirm the full open→click→submit chain works end to end with a seed target first.

Prerequisites

• Familiarity with security operations concepts and tools
• Access to a test or lab environment for safe execution
• Python 3.8+ with required dependencies installed
• Appropriate authorization for any testing activities

Instructions

1. Install dependencies: pip install gophish requests
2. Deploy GoPhish server and obtain an API key from Settings.
3. Use the Python gophish library to automate campaign setup:
   • Create email templates with HTML body and tracking
   • Configure SMTP sending profiles
   • Import target groups from CSV
   • Create landing pages for credential capture
   • Launch and monitor campaigns
4. Analyze campaign results: opens, clicks, submitted data, reported.

# For authorized penetration testing and lab environments only
python scripts/agent.py --gophish-url https://localhost:3333 --api-key <key> --campaign-name "Q1 Awareness" --output phishing_report.json

Examples

Create Campaign via API

from gophish import Gophish
from gophish.models import Campaign, Template, Group, SMTP, Page
api = Gophish("api_key", host="https://localhost:3333", verify=False)  # Self-signed cert on localhost lab
campaign = Campaign(name="Q1 Test", groups=[Group(name="Sales Team")],
    template=Template(name="IT Password Reset"), smtp=SMTP(name="Internal SMTP"),
    page=Page(name="Credential Page"))
api.campaigns.post(campaign)