Every fortnight, host Hazel Burton brings on a new guest from Talos or the broader Cisco Security world to break down a complicated security topic. We cover everything from breaking news to attacker trends and emerging threats.
We're back with another year in review focused episode. This time the focus will be the threat landscape generally and I'll be joined by threat researcher Caitlin Huey. In this episode we'll discuss what we found in the last year, with a focus on the general threat landscape. We'll spend time discussing dual use tools, lolbins, and the surprising re-emergence of USB attacks in 2022.
In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Vanja Svjacer to discuss his recent blog on XLL abuse. This year Microsoft finally removed support for macros from their office suite creating a vacuum in the threat landscape. Macros had been the tool of choice for adversaries for the last several years and the race to find alternatives is underway. In this episode we'll talk a bit about Office Add-Ins and how we've already seen adversaries starting to abuse XLL files in the wild.
In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Jacob Finn to discuss the APT summary section of the larger year in review report. These state sponsored actors tend to conduct more sophisticated, targeted campaigns typically related to espionage or other information gathering activities. This episode will dive a bit deeper on what can be found in the report as well as an overview of the state sponsored activity we've observed from the last year.
In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Tiago Periera to discuss his recent blog on truebot activity. Truebot and the silence group have been active for a number of years operating primarily financially motivated cybercrime. In this episode we will talk about the recent campaign we observed as well as the tools and tactics we uncovered. We'll also discuss the links between these groups and other threat actors, like TA505.
In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Kendall McKay to discuss the recently released year in review report and dig deep on our activities in Ukraine. The year in review covers a vast amount of data and intel sources to identify some of the key trends we observed in 2022. Our activities in Ukraine have been well documented, in this episode we'll also talk more broadly about the trends and highlight some key findings from the past year.
LodaRAT is an AutoIT based RAT that has been distributed for the last several years. Initially tied to the Kasablanka group its distribution has grown over the years. In this episode we'll be talking with the researcher, Chris Neal, to discuss LodaRAT, the campaigns we've been observing along with some key tidbits about how AutoIT is abused by adversaries. Including some fun with decompiling and recompling.
InterPlanetary File System or IPFS has increased in prominence as a file hosting technology associated with Web 3.0. It's probably most well known for hosting NFTs, but this blockchain related technology is also being abused by bad actors. In this episode we'll be talking with Edmund Brumaghin about his recent research into IPFS and his findings. We'll also talk about the ways we've seen malicious actors abuse it and briefly touch on things organizations can do to protect themselves.
To wrap up Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we're looking at the best, and free, ways to improve your security skills. Jason Kirkland and David Roman from Cisco Talos Incident Response join Jon to talk about the websites, YouTube channels, social media profiles and more they use to stay up-to-date on security news and polish their cybersecurity skills. Here are links to some of the resources we spoke about in this episode: @SwiftOnSecurity @CISAgov Blue Team Village Discord The Definitive Compendi...
To celebrate this week's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month theme, we have a special 101 episode of Talos Takes to cover the basics of threat hunting. This is a crucial skill for any cybersecurity professional-in-training and one of the questions we get the most often. Asheer Malhotra from the Talos Outreach team joins the show to talk about where he starts finding new malware families and threat actors, what the barriers usually are that he has to overcome and what check boxes he has to hit...
To celebrate National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, two one-time "security noobs" talk about their career trajectories and how they've grown to see themselves in cyber. Sammi Seaman and Jon Munshaw talk about their previous careers in library services and journalism, respectively, and how they applied some of those skills to cybersecurity. Other talking points include: Cybersecurity "ah ha!" moments. Not being afraid to ask questions. Free ways to expand one's cybersecurity knowledge. The impor...
Azim Khodjibaev joins the show once again for the latest addition of "Days of our Ransomware." Jon and Azim talk about the recent LockBit 3.0 leaks and the drama surrounding them. Will other actors try to backpack off the leaked builder? Why is LockBit switching to triple extortion tactics now? And what other trends are going on in the ransomware landscape? This is the perfect place to get caught up on all things ransomware to head into the rest of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
Nick Biasini is back on once again to talk to Jon about Insider Threats. Nick recently wrote a post about how he and Cisco Talos Incident Response are seeing an increase in these types of attacks in the wild . And while the term "insider threat" may sound like someone actively seeking to do something bad, that's now always the case. This week's episode discusses how to prepare for Insider Threats and some of the hallmarks of the spam emails, calls and mobile notifications we're seeing in these c...
Vitor Ventura from the Talos Outreach team joins the show this week to run down Talos' recent research into the Lazarus Group. This well-known North Korean state-sponsored threat actor is well known for their ransomware and cryptocurrency-related cyber attacks, but we recently found them launching a new information-stealing trojan targeting energy companies . Vitor talks about the new trojan, MagicRAT, and how it fits into their larger plans and motivations....
Guilherme Venere of the Outreach team joins Jon this week to discuss the Gamaredon APT group. This Russian state-sponsored actor is infamous at this point in its life, but it keeps growing by adding new tools and malware. Recently, Guilherme helped to discover a new campaign targeting users and organizations in Ukraine , a common target of Gamaredon since the onset of Russia's invasion. They discuss what's unique about this particular attack, and why we can't just assume their activities will st...
We're headed back to school with Talos Takes again! Pierre Cadieux from Cisco Talos Incident Response joins the show to talk about advice for educational institutions. Jon asks him about common incident response advice for the education sector and we cover security advice for school admins, parents and students who have to worry about electronic devices traveling to and from school and connecting to all sorts of networks. This episode is particularly relevant this week given some recent major cy...
This week, we have the audio version of our recent livestream for Ukraine Independence Day. Talos assembled a panel of experts who have been working hands-on to defend critical Ukraine systems and its citizens from cyber threats. JJ Cummings, Ashlee Benge and Dmytro Krozhevin answer questions from Hazel Burton about the current security threats Ukraine faces, what Talos has done to hunt for threats in the region and how Cisco is supporting its employees in Ukraine.
An underrated aspect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the effect it’s had on the global food supply chain. Ukraine is a major importer and exporter of grain and other food staples, but the industry now faces kinetic and cyber threats. Joe Marshall of Talos has spent months learning all about agricultural cybersecurity and the unique position farming equipment and infrastructure is in. Joe recently wrote about these threats for the Talos blog and joins Talos Takes to talk about how important Uk...
The public traditionally thinks about cyber attacks as being from some well-funded, state-sponsored actor. But increasingly small-time criminals are turning to the internet to make their money. Increasingly, they’re not carrying out one-off robberies, and instead are working on insurance fraud scams and spam emails. Nick Biasini joins Talos Takes this week to discuss his recent research into this topic and shares what the data shows about the growth of small-time cybercrime....
This week’s episode of Talos Takes is a special extra large edition. We’ve got the audio version of our recent Cisco Talos Incident Response On Air stream where some of our responders got together to discuss the past threats of the top quarter. Liz Waddell and other team members covered everything from recent ransomware actor drama, to the importance of saving logs and other tips they picked up over the past few months.
It’s been a while since we re-visited our Malware 101 series. So we’re going back to class to learn about information-stealers. Aliza Johnson from the Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team joins the show to talk about her recent research into and overview of infostealers . Although the name is pretty self-explanatory, this type of malware comes in many shapes and sizes for many purposes.
Nate Pors joins the show this week to recap the recently released Cisco Talos Incident Response Quarterly Report. He and Jon recap the top attacker trends from the past quarter, including highlighting which types of attacks CTIR saw in the field and what new techniques adversaries are using. Topics discussed include the increased targeting of telecommunications companies, a decline in ransomware attacks and more business email compromise.
Yes, this is the third time we’ve talked about Transparent Tribe on Talos Takes, you’re not going crazy. But they keep giving us reasons to bring them up! This time, Nick Biasini joins the show to discuss the latest evolution of this threat actor: The targeting of higher education institutions in India. Jon and Nick discuss why colleges are always a high-priority target and what this could mean for the evolution of the actor.
We go back to college this week with a Psychology 101 class. And today, we’re covering multi-factor authentication. Jon has Dave Lewis, one of Cisco Duo’s advisory CISOs, on the show to talk about the psychology behind using these apps and talking to users about implementing it across their environments. They discuss moving around the accept and reject buttons in the UI, how we communicate the benefits of MFA to administrators and the recent wave of brute-force attacks.
Chris Neal from Talos Outreach recently dove into a recent AvosLocker ransomware attack in the wild. This week, he joins the show to recap his major takeaways from this attack that other potential targets can learn from. He and Jon talk about the current ransomware-as-a-service landscape, the use of living-off-the-land binaries and other calling cards from this actor to keep an eye out for....
Paul Eubanks joins this week’s episode of Talos Takes to look at his recent blog post on de-anonymizing ransomware groups on the whispers dark web. Paul and his team recently used several tactics to unmask several threat actors and disclosure their tactics to stay hidden. Jon interviews Paul about ransomware actors’ usual operations on the dark web, the specific tools and tactics he used and the pros and cons of calling out actors for their opsec failures.
Jon reports live from the floor of Cisco Live U.S. this week. He interviewed several Talos speakers about their talks at Cisco Live and some of the major takeaways from conversations with users and customers this week.
Get ready for Cisco Live next week in Vegas with a quick primer on everything Talos has going on at the conference. We’re excited to be back in person interacting with customers and users. Jon has a complete rundown of the Talos space at the conference, some talk highlights and other things you should know before you go. For a complete agenda, check out the Cisco Live Session Catalog .
We’re doing something a bit different this week — it’s just Jon for a few minutes talking about Talos’ plans at the RSA Conference coming up next week. Catch up on our plans for the week and here about some special events we have planned. To stay up-to-date on the latest, follow us on Twitter . And if you prefer a written preview, read this week’s Threat Source newsletter ....
The recently disclosed vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP took security Twitter by storm two weeks ago, and continues to make headlines now. It immediately prompted warnings from CISA and security researchers everywhere warning users to patch as soon as possible. Of course, it’s important to patch. But maybe we started panicking a little too early that this was going to be the next PrintNightmare. On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, Jon is joined by Jerry Gamblin from Kenna Security to talk about the...
See people, this is what happens when you finally let a panda drive a sports car! This week’s episode of Talos Takes covers the basics of MustangPanda, a Chinese state-sponsored actor we wrote about recently . Asheer Maholtra joins the show to go over his research into this group. Mainly, we discuss why this actor, despite being aligned with China, is targeting Russian government entities and organizations. Though the two countries seem to be allies, all is fair in love and cyber espionage....
