Talos Takes

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 recent...

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...

Andrew Windsor from our malware research team joins the show for the first time to talk about Solarmarker . This is a campaign Andrew’s followed for a while that recently added new modules that make it particularly dangerous. The attackers behind Solarmarker could basically use this threat to drop whatever they want. At least for now, they’re sticking to information-stealing. But could it ever get...

Students are starting to go back to school across the U.S. There are plenty of things to worry about with the “new normal” while the world still combats COVID-19, and while we can’t help students, teachers and admins with everything, we can at least provide a little security advice. Nick Biasini joins the show once again to discuss the best cybersecurity practices as schools spin back up. What sho...

As more people around the world start to get vaccinated against COVID-19, travel is becoming easier, especially during these summer months. But as much as you may be excited to travel, so are threat actors. Asheer Malhotra was part of a team that looked into a series of campaigns targeting users in Latin America , specifically using social engineering tactics centered around travel. Some of the lu...

“Proxyware” sounds like a complicated topic that you’re too afraid to ask about. But really, it’s just software that allows users to sell off a portion of their internet bandwidth for a small profit. Problem is, attackers are swooping in on this popular software to spread malware and steal users’ money. Edmund Brumaghin joins the show this week to discuss his recent research into proxyware applica...

Fresh off of translating an entire ransomware playbook from Russian to English, Azim and Dave from the Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team join Talos Takes to talk about this project. They provide some first-hand insights into what this leaked playbook tells us about the Conti ransomware-as-a-service group. Threat actors — they have feelings just like us!

Allow Vitor Ventura to take you on a journey of discovery, threat actors and attribution. He recently assisted with an investigation into a series of malware and spam campaigns using aviation-themed lures. These include fake flight itineraries, invoices and more. Vitor joins us on this week’s Talos Takes episode to discuss what he learned during this process, including how he connected the campaig...

Asheer Malhotra joins the show to once again cover a cyber attack in South Asia. This time, it’s an attacker that looks and smells like an APT, but may just be a run-of-the-mill crimeware gang. Asheer discusses he and his colleagues’ research into Operation: Armor Piercer , a campaign targeted at government agencies and military contractors. Needless to say, these are high-profile targets. Find ou...

Everyone loves to talk and write about how tough it is that we are all working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. So for once — to celebrate National Cybersecurity Awareness Month — Talos Takes wants to talk about the positives! Christopher Marshall, the head of Talos’ detection research team, joins the show to discuss how he’s kept his team’s morale up during this time. Cybersecurity is a rou...

We are from the first (or last) people to say this, but 2021 is the year of ransomware. It’s by far the biggest story on the security landscape right now. And everything from oil pipelines, to grain co-ops, to hospitals and schools have been targeted by ransomware this year. Azim Khodjibaev joins the show for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month to wrap up everything we’ve seen on the ransomware...

We continue our special series for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month by addressing everyone’s worst nightmare: phish. Who among us hasn’t gotten the call, “We’re trying to reach out about your car’s extended warranty?” In this Talos Takes, Jaeson Schultz, Talos’ foremost spam and phish expert, breaks down spam emails, phone calls and messages for any user. We discuss new trends we’re seeing f...

This is a double special Talos Takes episode — it’s XL-sized and continues our Cybersecurity Awareness Month theme. This is a recording of our live stream from earlier this week with Brad Garnett, the general manager of Talos Incident Response. Even if you’ve never worked with an incident response team before, or have no idea what IR is, this is a perfect place to start. We provide the tl;dr of th...

We have another special extra large-sized version of Talos Takes this week. Enjoy this recording of a live stream we hosted earlier this week with Martin Lee from our Talos Communications team and Paul Lee from Cisco Talos Incident Response. The Lees discuss how to build the perfect Incident Response Plan. First, Martin walks through the basics of creating, editing and iterating on an IR plan. The...

Jon took a break from listening to “Red (Taylor’s Version)” to turn this podcast around quickly to align with our recent research on the Kimsuky APT. This North Korean state-sponsored actor is in the wild again targeting South Korean organizations that house potentially sensitive information. The group set up fake Blogger sites to lure in the victims to read about news related to nuclear disarmame...

For the first time in Talos Takes’ history, we have a formal crossover with Beers with Talos. Mitch Neff, the host of BWT, joins the show to talk about his horror stories using public WiFi networks. He and Jon discuss the safest ways to interact with large, public network in places like libraries, parks and airports, and potential alternatives to public hotspots.

Sorry for dropping two episodes in the feed in one day, but we also needed to find time to talk about the critical zero-day vulnerability in Apache HTTP Server. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to perform path traversal and eventually remote code execution. Patch for this one as soon as possible, and use the Snort rule we have available now.

We know, we know. We do one of these every year. But people still falling for scams, so we still have to keep reminding people how to shop safely online! This year is a bit different than past Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays because of the issues around the supply chain. Attackers are sure to try to convince you that the big gift you want this year won’t arrive on time so you have to “ACT NOW!” Pl...

Emotet was about a month late for Halloween, because it’s got its zombie costume on. The long-known botnet is showing some signs of life in late 2021 after an international law enforcement takedown earlier this year. Nick Biasini joins Talos Takes this week to discuss what signs we’re seeing to indicate Emotet’s return, and provides some advice as to what we should look out for as we head into 202...

We had to give Brad a few minutes to take an Incident Response victory lap after his team received two major accolades over the past two weeks. But aside from that, it’s also a perfect time to have him on ahead of the holidays. The shopping season is always a favorite time for attackers, so it’s as good a time as any to make sure your incident response plan is polished and practiced. We also take...

This is a special XL edition of Talos Takes that is a replay of a live stream our amazing researchers put on earlier this week. You’ll hear Matt Olney, Amy Henderson and Vitor Ventura, all from Talos, talk about the Log4J vulnerability that is ruining the internet for everyone right now . They discussed the latest news around the vulnerability, provided advice to users who may be affected (i.e., p...

We thought it was usually all about “New year, new me,” heading into 2022, but turns out it’s the same cybersecurity problems. Join host Jon Munshaw as he welcomes on threat researcher JJ Cummings to discuss how the Log4j vulnerability event evolved over the holiday break. JJ, who you may recognized from our recent live Beers with Talos episode, discusses the new CVE that popped up the week after...

Jon Munshaw and Nick Biasini sit down for a few minutes to discuss the latest on the ongoing cyber attacks and security concerns in Ukraine. They discuss how a recent set of attacks against government-run websites compares to past attacks like NotPetya, and provide guidance for any companies who may be based in, or do business in, Ukraine. For more of Talos’ insight on this, please continue to che...

What’s a commodity RAT? And how does that make it different from your run-of-the-mill RAT? Is that RAT different than a trojan? In this week’s Talos Takes episode, we answer these questions and more to provide you a quick overview of remote access trojans/tools (aka RATs) and how commodity RATS specifically differ from their “normal” brethren. Asheer Malhotra from our Outreach team has been lookin...

As the Ukraine situation evolves, we figured it was an important time to check in with the specific threats government agencies across the globe have started to warn us about. Joe Marshall, Talos’ resident industrial control systems expert, joins this week’s episode of Talos Takes to talk about potential threats to Ukraine’s power grid should kinetic warfare break out in the area. We also touch on...