Insights from one year of tracking a polymorphic threat

A little over a year ago, in October 2018, our polymorphic outbreak monitoring system detected a large surge in reports, indicating that a large-scale campaign was unfolding. We observed as the new threat attempted to deploy files that changed every 20-30 minutes on thousands of devices. We gave...

The cybercrime ecosystem: attacking blogs

Executive summary The Cybercrime Ecosystem is a series of articles explaining how cybercriminals operate, what drives them, what techniques they use and how we, regular Internet users, are part of that ecosystem. The articles will also cover technical details and up-to-date research on the threat...

Stealthy Malware Flies Under AV Radar with Advanced Obfuscation

Researchers warn hackers are putting a new spin on old injection techniques and successfully end-running endpoint protection. They are tracking a campaign, that kicked off in January, that is still going strong exploiting weaknesses in web browsers. The objective is to hide in the background of...

Changing security incident response by utilizing the power of the cloud—DART tools, techniques, and procedures: part 1

This is the first in a blog series discussing the tools, techniques, and procedures that the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART use to investigate cybersecurity incidents at our customer organizations. Today, we introduce the team and give a brief overview of each of the tools that utiliz...

Microsoft Edge Chakra Scripting Engine CVE-2019-1427 Remote Memory Corruption Vulnerability

Description Microsoft Edge is prone to a remote memory-corruption vulnerability. Attackers can exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code in the context of the currently logged-in user. Failed attacks will cause denial of service conditions. Technologies Affected Microsoft ChakraCore Microsoft...

Detecting Account Takeover Botnets

A botnet is a network of compromised computers - known as bots - usually controlled by a command and control computer, that work together in coordination for a malicious purpose. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to detect botnets used for account takeover ATO, an attack used to obtain the val...

Microsegmentation and Isolation: 2 Essential Strategies in Zero-Trust Security

The headlines over the past few years have been consistent – enterprises are pouring more and more money into cybersecurity countermeasures. Indications are that 2020 will be no different, with reports that nearly three quarters of CISOs plan to ask their CFOs for increased cybersecurity investme...

Magecart Groups Attack Simultaneous Sites in Card-Theft Frenzy

In an interesting development on the financial cybercrime scene, different Magecart groups have been spotting stepping over each other and attacking the same sites. Magecart is an umbrella term encompassing several different threat groups who all use the same modus operandi: They compromise...

Cisco Talos helps CISOs get back to basics with advisory series

At Cisco Talos, we try to build detections for every threat we see to provide customers with a portfolio capable of identifying and stopping threats at various stages of an attack's lifecycle. Deploying the best suite of layered security tools is an integral part of protecting an organization. Bu...

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service - Crescendo

McAfee ATR Analyzes Sodinokibi aka REvil Ransomware-as-a-Service – Crescendo By Jessica Saavedra-Morales · October 20, 2019 Episode 4: Crescendo This is the final installment of the McAfee Advanced Threat Research ATR analysis of Sodinokibi and its connections to GandGrab, the most prolific...

Postenum - A Clean, Nice And Easy Tool For Basic/Advanced Privilege Escalation Techniques

Postenum is a clean, nice and easy tool for basic/advanced privilege escalation vectors/techniques. Postenum tool is intended to be executed locally on a Linux box. Be more than a normal user. be the ROOT. USE ./postenum.sh option ./postenum.sh -s ./postenum.sh -c Options : -a : All -s : Filesyst...

Mahalo FIN7: Responding to the Criminal Operators’ New Tools and Techniques

During several recent incident response engagements, FireEye Mandiant investigators uncovered new tools in FIN7’s malware arsenal and kept pace as the global criminal operators attempted new evasion techniques. In this blog, we reveal two of FIN7’s new tools that we have called BOOSTWRITE and...

Staying Hidden on the Endpoint: Evading Detection with Shellcode

True red team assessments require a secondary objective of avoiding detection. Part of the glory of a successful red team assessment is not getting detected by anything or anyone on the system. As modern Endpoint Detection and Response EDR products have matured over the years, the red teams must...

Twitter Uses Phone Numbers, Emails to Sell Ads

Twitter has acknowledged that user phone numbers and email addresses gathered for security purposes, as part of its two-factor authentication policy, may have been used to sell ads. It calls the move an accident. The revelation is being widely criticized for its obvious breach of user privacy,...

APT Groups Exploiting Flaws in Unpatched VPNs, Officials Warn

State-sponsored advanced persistent threat APT groups are using flaws in outdated VPN technologies from Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Pulse Secure to carry out cyber attacks on targets in the United States and overseas, warned U.S. and U.K. officials. The National Security Agency NSA issued a...

SQLMap v1.3.10 - Automatic SQL Injection And Database Takeover Tool

SQLMap is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws and taking over of database servers. It comes with a powerful detection engine, many niche features for the ultimate penetration tester and a broad range of switches lastin...

The Phishing Industry

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, phishing attacks are now being created and executed on an industrial scale. Malicious actors are increasingly using highly sophisticated off-the-shelf phishing kits that allow them to deliver very targeted, short-lived attacks. These campaigns direct victi...

The Hottest Malware Hits of the Summer

It's been a summer of ransomware hold-ups, supply chain attacks and fileless attacks flying under the radar of old-school security. With malware running amok while we were lying on the beach, here's a recap of the most burning strains and trends seen in the wild during the months of July and Augu...

Implementing EQR — Creating a Solution for Real-Time Processing of Disparate Big Data Sources

Building an Event Query Router for Big Data Translation and Processing In a previous post, we discussed the data engineering challenge of scaling security. Analyzing the volume and variety of data required by a cybersecurity application isn’t an easy process, so we are always looking for innovati...

How To Handle Evolutions in Cybercrime

Cybercriminals are Evolving Attackers are constantly evolving their techniques—finding ways to evade your defenses and stay in your systems longer. Today, 68% of attacks remain undetected for months or more. Traditional antivirus AV can’t hold up against the modern hacker. New attacks, like...