Threat Roundup for March 17 to March 24

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between March 17 and March 24. As with previous roundups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavioral...

Threat Source newsletter (Sept. 15, 2022) — Teachers have to be IT admins now, too

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Public schools in the United States already rely on our teachers for so much — they have to be educators, occasional parental figures, nurses, safety officers, law enforcement and much more. Slowly, they’re having to...

Updates to the Cisco Talos Email Status Portal

Cisco Talos is rolling out several changes to the Email Status Portal that adds new features and makes the Portal even easier to use. The Talos Email Status Portal allows users to view mail samples submitted and their statuses, analyze graphical displays of submission metrics, administer... This ...

Threat Roundup for July 9 to July 16

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 9 and July 16. As with previous roundups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavioral...

Threat Roundup for July 2 to July 9

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 2 and July 9. As with previous roundups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics,...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Information disclosure vulnerability in the Linux Kernel

Lilith and Claudio Bozzato of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an information disclosure vulnerability in the Linux Kernel. The Linux Kernel is the free and open-source core of Unix-like operating systems.... This is only the beginnin...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Zoom Communications user enumeration

Video conferencing and calling software has spiked in popularity as individuals across the globe are forced to stay home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a plethora of players in this space, with one or two getting increased attention. One service in particular — Zoom — has received an...

Cryptominers, ransomware among top malware in IR engagements in Q4

By David Liebenberg and Kendall McKay. This summer’s most popular malware families were commonly seen, unsophisticated attacks, with phishing being the top infection vector, according to Cisco Talos Incident Response CTIR data. In addition to threat actors repeatedly deploying common threats like...

Threat Source newsletter (Oct. 31, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. We’re scared of stalkerware, and you should be, too. These spyware apps are becoming more popular among everyone from nation-states to...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerabilities in some NETGEAR routers

Dave McDaniel of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. The NETGEAR N300 line of wireless routers contains two denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The N300 is a small and affordable wireless router that contains the basic features of a wireless router. An attacker could exploit these bugs b...

Beers with Talos Ep. #46 - Privacy Pwnd: ExileRAT and Collecting Bad Karma

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 46 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 46 show notes: Recorded Feb. 1, 2019 Today we discuss threats that bridge the gap between violating privacy and classic...

Beers with Talos Ep. #45: SoHo attacks, IoT devices, and the cesspool setting

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 45 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 45 show notes: Recorded Jan. 18, 2019 We have an extended roundtable today even more than usual because we accidentally...

Year in Malware 2018: The most prominent threats Talos tracked this year

It was easy to see a wild year coming in cybersecurity. It started with a bang, with Olympic Destroyer targeting the Winter Olympics in February in an attempt to disrupt the opening ceremonies. Things only got crazier from there, with cryptocurrency miners popping up everywhere, and VPNFilter...

Beers with Talos EP 36: There Are Few Shades in the Grey Market

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 36 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing: www.talosintelligence.com/podcast. Ep. 36 show notes: Recorded Aug. 24, 2018 — We’re finally back in the studio after Hacker Summer Camp!...

TeleGrab - Grizzly Attacks on Secure Messaging

This post was written by Vitor Ventura with contributions from Azim Khodjibaev Introduction Over the past month and a half, Talos has seen the emergence of a malware that collects cache and key files from end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service Telegram. This malware was first seen on Apri...

The Many Tentacles of the Necurs Botnet

This post was written by Jaeson Schultz. Introduction Over the past five years the Necurs botnet has established itself as the largest purveyor of spam worldwide. Necurs is responsible for emailing massive amounts of banking malware, ransomware, dating spam, pump-n-dump stock scams, work from hom...

Dissecting the JWR phishing framework

Cisco Talos recently identified an undocumented phishing framework, internally branded "JWR" by its developer, built to convincingly impersonate checkout and login pages across major payment and shopping platforms. The client engine of the JWR phishing framework is a real-time, operator-driven...

Active exploitation of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN by UAT-8616

Cisco Talos is tracking the active exploitation of CVE-2026-20127, a vulnerability in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller, formerly vSmart, that allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to bypass authentication and obtain administrative privileges on the affected system by sending a crafted request...

NVIDIA shader out-of-bounds and eleven LevelOne router vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Research team recently discovered five Nvidia out-of-bounds access vulnerabilities in shader processing, as well as eleven LevelOne router vulnerabilities spanning a range of possible exploits. For Snort coverage that can detect the exploitation of these vulnerabilities...

Fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks, Part 1: HTTP server fuzzing

This is the first post of a three-part series, where we will be delving into the intricacies of fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks. The techniques I will discuss are universally applicable to various RTOS environments, though our focus will primarily be on µC/OS. Ill highlight some of the strategic co...

It's best to just assume you’ve been involved in a data breach somehow

Between AT&T, all the follow-on activity from Snowflake, Microsoft Outlook, and more, its best to probably just assume at this point that your personal information has somehow been involved in a data breach. Were only halfway through 2024, and weve already seen some of the largest data breaches a...

Vulnerability in some TP-Link routers could lead to factory reset

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team has disclosed 10 vulnerabilities over the past three weeks, including four in a line of TP-Link routers, one of which could allow an attacker to reset the devices settings back to the factory default. A popular open-source software for internet-of-things Io...

Eight vulnerabilities in Open Automation Software Platform could lead to information disclosure, improper authentication

Cisco Talos recently disclosed eight vulnerabilities in the engine configuration functionality in Open Automations Software Platform. OAS Platform is commonly found in industrial operations and enterprise environments. It allows various devices, including PLCs, servers, files, databases and...

New threat actor targets Bulgaria, China, Vietnam and other countries with customized Yashma ransomware

Cisco Talos discovered an unknown threat actor, seemingly of Vietnamese origin, conducting a ransomware operation that began at least as early as June 4, 2023. This ongoing attack uses a variant of the Yashma ransomware likely to target multiple geographic areas by mimicking WannaCry...

Threat Roundup for October 28 to November 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Oct. 28 and Nov. 4. As with previous roundups, this post isnt meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats weve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics,...

Threat Source newsletter (Oct. 13, 2022) — Cybersecurity Awareness Month is all fun and memes until someone gets hurt

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Which, if you’ve been on social media at all the past 13 days or read any cybersecurity news website, you surely know already. As it does every year, I saw...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Issue in Accusoft ImageGear could lead to memory corruption, code execution

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a use-after-free vulnerability in Accusoft ImageGear's PSD header processing function. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit that allows users to create,...

Signed MSI files, Raccoon and Amadey are used for installing ServHelper RAT

By Vanja Svajcer. News summaryGroup TA505 has been active for at least seven years, making wide-ranging connections with other threat actors involved in ransomware, stealing credit card numbers and exfiltrating data. One of the common tools in TA505's arsenal is ServHelper. In mid-June, Cisco...

Threat Source newsletter (July 22, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. I'm compiling this Tuesday for vacation reasons, so apologies for any major stories I'm missing here. This week's Beers with Talos podcast hits the seas again. And although we've covered sea shanties in the past, this... This is on...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit that allows users to create, edit, annotate and convert various...

Elizabethan England has nothing on modern-day Russia

This post was authored by Warren Mercer and Vitor Ventura The threat landscape is changing. Organizations need to defend against an ever-evolving tranche of threat actors. For a long time, the lines that distinguish state-sponsored and crimeware groups were well-defined. We believe this is... Thi...

Threat Source Newsletter (May 13, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. In case you missed the Friday news drop last week, we have an update on the Lemon Duck cryptocurrency miner. It's not as eye-catching as the ransomware attacks that make the news, but Lemon Duck's... This is only the beginning!...

Talos Takes Ep. #49: LodaRAT keeps growing....and growing

By Jon Munshaw. The latest episode of Talos Takes is available now. Download this episode and subscribe to Talos Takes using the buttons below, or visit the Talos Takes page. Chris Neal from Talos Outreach has followed LodaRAT for years now. It’s gone from a fairly small threat to a full-on... Th...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Genivia gSOAP

A Cisco Talos team member discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in various Genivia gSOAP toolkit plugins. These vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to carry out a variety of malicious activities, including causing a...

FireEye Breach Detection Guidance

Update 12/14: Cisco Talos has implemented additional blocks in relation to the supply chain attack on SolarWinds® Orion® Platform. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued Emergency Directive 21-01 due to this campaign. Talos is continuing to investigate this matter. I...

ObliqueRAT: New RAT hits victims' endpoints via malicious documents

By Asheer Malhotra. Cisco Talos has observed a malware campaign that utilizes malicious Microsoft Office documents maldocs to spread a remote access trojan RAT we're calling "ObliqueRAT." These maldocs use malicious macros to deliver the second stage RAT payload. This campaign appears to target...

Threat Source newsletter (Nov. 21, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. It’s nearly holiday shopping season, which means it’s prime scam season. On the latest Beers with Talos episode, we run down the best wa...

Threat Source newsletter (Sept. 19, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. We’re all still trying to shake off the summer. Gone are the early Fridays, beach vacations and days by the pool. Turns out, attackers m...

Cyber Security Week in Review (March 15)

Welcome to this week's Cyber Security Week in Review, where Cisco Talos runs down all of the news we think you need to know in the security world. For more news delivered to your inbox every week, sign up for our Threat Source newsletter here. Top headlines this week The U.S. warned Germany that...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Privilege escalation bug in CleanMyMac X's helper service

Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Executive summary CleanMyMac X contains a privilege escalation vulnerability in its helper service due to improper updating. The application fails to remove the vulnerable components upon upgrading to the latest version, leaving the user...

What we learned by unpacking a recent wave of Imminent RAT infections using AMP

This blog post was authored by Chris Marczewski Cisco Talos has been tracking a series of Imminent RAT infections for the past two months following reported data from Cisco Advanced Malware Protection's AMP Exploit Prevention engine. AMP successfully stopped the malware before it was able to infe...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC text field remote code execution vulnerability

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Executive summary Adobe Acrobat Reader DC contains a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on the victim’s machine. If the attacker tricks the user into opening a specially crafted PDF with specific...

Tracking Tick Through Recent Campaigns Targeting East Asia

This blog post is authored by Ashlee Benge and Jungsoo An, with contributions from Dazhuo Li. Summary Since 2016, an advanced threat group that Cisco Talos is tracking has carried out cyberattacks against South Korea and Japan. This group is known by several different names: Tick, Redbaldknight a...

IcedID Banking Trojan Teams up with Ursnif/Dreambot for Distribution

Update: 4/11 we have corrected the detection to Ursnif/Dreambot This post was authored by Ross Gibb with research contributions from Daphne Galme, and Michael Gorelik of Morphisec, a Cisco Security Technical Alliance partner. Cisco has noticed an increase in infections by the banking trojan IcedI...

CannibalRAT targets Brazil

This post was authored by Warren Mercer and Vitor Ventura Introduction Talos has identified two different versions of a RAT, otherwise known as a remote access trojan, that has been written entirely in Python and is wrapped into a standalone executable. The RAT is impacting users of a Brazilian...

Threat Round-up for June 30 - July 07

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between June 30 and July 07. As with previous round-ups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics,...

Out-of-bounds read vulnerability in NVIDIA driver; Open-source flashcard software contains multiple security issues

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team has helped to disclose and patch six new vulnerabilities over the past three weeks, including one in a driver that powers certain NVIDIA graphics cards. The majority of the vulnerabilities that Talos disclosed during this period exist in Ankitects Anki, an...

A new alert system from CISA seems to be effective — now we just need companies to sign up

One of the great cybersecurity challenges organizations currently face, especially smaller ones, is that they dont know what they dont know. Its tough to have your eyes on everything all the time, especially with so many pieces of software running and IoT devices extending the reach of networks...

Not everything has to be a massive, global cyber attack

Some of my Webex rooms recently have been blowing up with memes about blaming Canada or wild speculation that a state-sponsored actor is carrying out some sort of major campaign. After a widespread outage of cellular service with AT&T and other carriers a few weeks ago, people were sure it was so...

Threat Source newsletter (May 11, 2023) — So much for that ransomware decline

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. I wrote a few weeks ago about how, between the public and private sectors, the security community was making some strides in fighting back against ransomware. Reports indicate that revenue for ransomware actors was down in 2022, and...