Talos Takes

Jerry Gamblin from Cisco Kenna joins this week's episode to talk about all things patching. If you're the average user, you probably don't think about patching much because many of them happen automatically in the background. However many admins and users can unknowingly fall behind when it comes to protecting themselves against the latest vulnerabilities. 

Everyone is tired of getting spam emails at this point, and it can feel exhausting always to click that "report spam" button just to get another phony email a few hours later. But we're here to assure you that reporting and filtering spam really does help in the long run! Nick Biasini joins the show this week to discuss all things spam for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. 

To continue our Cybersecurity Awareness Month series, Harpreet Singh from Talos Incident Response joins Jon to talk about password managers. They discuss the upside of using a third-party service like 1Password or LastPass, the potential dangers of using built-in browser password managers like Google Chrome and Safari, and other good password hygiene advice. 

All of October, we'll be covering broad security-related topics for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. First up, we address the basics of implementing MFA in any environment, why any type of MFA is better than no MFA, the pitfalls of certain types of authentication, and whether going passwordless is the future. 

Hazel Burton takes over as guest host for this episode as she talks to Nate Pors from Cisco Talos Incident Response. Nate was part of Talos IR's team that helped Veradigm, a healthcare technology company, prevent a Qakbot ransomware attack. Nate and his team recently w rote about this experience for the Talos blog, and Veradigm's CISO even joined the Cisco Security Stories podcast recent...

What happens when the hackers become the hacked? Black Hat is one of the largest cybersecurity conferences in the world, and Talos had a hand in defending the on-site network for the past few years. Yuri Kramarz from Talos Incident Response worked in Black Hat's Network Operations Center this year to help defend Black Hat's network and attendees who connected to the network while attendi...

Cisco Talos has recently written about malware families that go open-source, sometimes of their own volition, and sometimes because of leaks . In the case of SapphireStealer, we still don't really know why someone posted this malware to GitHub, but now that it's out there, we can't put it back in a box. Edmund Brumaghin, who assisted with Talos' research and blog post on Sapphi...

North Korea's infamous APT group is back on the scene, this time with two new remote access trojans. By now, you've probably heard of Lazarus Group and all the annoying things they do to steal sensitive information, make money for North Korea's missile program, etc. But we have an update on their current tactics and payloads they're sending around the globe. Asheer Malhotra fro...

Everything about the modern workplace is different now from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many companies are embracing the remote work lifestyle, while others are stuck in a hybrid model or pushing employees to come back to the office. With that in mind, we felt like it was a good time to check in on the incident response process for companies who have to deal with working remotely and those...

The stereotypical "hacker" who looks to do good in the world probably involves a Guy Fawkes mask and black hoodie. But hacktivism has become much more than that, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. On the heels of a newly released overview on hacktivism , Lexi DiScola from the Talos Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team joins Talos Takes this week to discuss these actors. While...

Cisco Talos Incident Response observed data theft extortion more than any other type of cyber attack last quarter . So why has it become so popular? And what makes it different from ransomware? Jacob Finn from the Talos Threat Intelligence and Interdiction Team joins Jon this week to discuss the basics of data theft extortion. He just worked on an overview of this threat for Talos researchers and...

Hazel Burton and Jon Munshaw use this week to look back on the top threats and cybersecurity trends so far in 2023 and the rest of the year. Hazel recently compiled Talos' Half-Year in Review , recapping the top stories that Talos has been following so far this year. She and Jon talk about what stood out from the report, what our researchers have been thinking about up to this point, and what...

We're back with the audio version of our quarterly Cisco Talos Incident Response On Air stream. Join the Talos IR team as they recap the past quarter's top trends , including talking about malware they're seeing in the wild, tactics that attackers are using most often to break into networks, and much more. They discuss why healthcare continues to be a popular target for bad actors,...

When Martin Lee first told Jon about ISO 27001 and 27002 , Jon had to immediately Google whatever this combination of letters and numbers meant. Turns out there are international standards for cybersecurity, just like they have for selling lightbulbs and installing electrical outlets — who knew? Martin recently wrote about these standards for the Talos blog , outlining a list of recommendations fo...

Asheer Malhotra is back to talk to Jon Munshaw about spyware and mercenary groups. Asheer recently helped publish Talos research on Mercenary Groups and why they're so dangerous in particular. We briefly touched on this topic in a past episode on the Predator/Alien spyware tag team , but this time we're getting into the broader field of what Mercenary groups are, exactly, and what makes...

We decided to have a web navigation extravaganza this week! Guilherme Venere and Jaeson Schultz from Talos Outreach have both long been researching the ways in which bad actors try to damage users' inherent trust in the internet . Most internet users interact with the web by typing in a URL or domain name into their web browser (i.e., google.com) expecting that will take them to the right pla...

Aliza Johnson from Talos Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team joins Jon Munshaw this week for a Talos Takes episode on the MOVEit zero-day vulnerability (that's since been patched) making headlines recently . Talos published an advisory last week on everything we know so far about the exploitation of this vulnerability and the group behind it, Clop. Aliza discusses where things stand rig...

Cisco Talos Incident Response recently discovered an uptick in malicious actors compromising vendor and third-party accounts to sneak into targeted networks. Many enterprises have vendor and contractor accounts that need to access their network for a variety of things — IT support, cybersecurity, etc. — but these accounts are often monitored less than those belonging to full-time employees. Craig...

We're joined this week by Chetan Raghuprasad to discuss a new botnet he recently discovered and researched. Horabot can completely hijack a target's Outlook mailbox to steal their contact list and then send even more spam to targets. It's the perfect business email compromise tool for attackers that comes with a side of banking trojan. Chetan talks to Jon about this malware family&a...

Despite governments' best efforts, spyware is still running rampant on the threat landscape. These types of tracking malware are used to target high-profile individuals like politicians, activists, journalists and more — and even sometimes for jealous exes to track their former partners. Asheer Malhotra, who recently dissected the Predator spyware, joins Talos Takes this week to talk about Pr...

Hazel Burton is our special guest host this week of Talos Takes, featuring a very special guest: Talos Vice President Matt Watchinski! Matt and Hazel have a conversation for Mental Health Awareness Month, especially as it relates to the cybersecurity industry. They share tips on how to balance work and life (when it seems like cybersecurity is starting to permeate every aspect of our lives) and ho...

Talos researchers recently discovered a new ransomware group called "RA Group." This week, Nick Biasni joins Jon to discuss this new threat actor and the modified Babuk ransomware they've already used in attacks against a wide range of companies in the U.S. and South Korea. Nick talks about the group's use of source code that's already been leaked, where they could be head...

Tiago Pereira from Talos Outreach joins the show this week to talk about his recent discovery of a new phishing-as-a-service tool called "Greatness." Since everything else is "as-a-service" nowadays, it's only fitting that attackers have figured out how to monetize easy phishing tools, too. Tiago discusses what makes Greatness unique, why it's going after business tar...

This week's episode is longer than usual, but we wanted to bring you the Cisco Talos Incident Response On Air livestream from last week for anyone who missed it. For anyone who prefers a video version, you can watch the recording here . In this discussion, researchers from Talos IR and the Talos Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team cover the top threats and attacker tactics they saw over...

On the heels of law enforcement agencies from across the globe working together to disrupt two popular cybercrime forums — Genesis Market and BreachForums — Azim Khodjibaev from Talos' Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team joins Jon to talk about these types of sites. Azim has years of experience infiltrating and investigating these types of marketplaces to learn about emerging security...