Threat Source newsletter (July 1, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. There's been a lot of talk recently around how to address America's infrastructure cybersecurity. After attacks like Colonial Pipeline and JBS, everyone across the public and private sectors are wondering what... This is only the...

What’s past is prologue – A new world of critical infrastructure security

By Caitlin Huey, Joe Marshall and Thomas Pope. Attackers have targeted American critical infrastructure several times over the past few years, putting at risk U.S. electrical grids, oil pipelines and water supply systems. However, we collectively have not responded in a meaningful way to these...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2021 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Chris Neal. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 55 vulnerabilities across its suite of products, the fewest in any month since January 2020. There are only three critical vulnerabilities patched in this month, while... This is...

Masslogger campaigns exfiltrates user credentials

By Vanja Svajcer. News summary As protection techniques develop, attackers are finding it harder to successfully attack their targets and must find creative ways to succeed. Cisco Talos recently discovered a campaign utilizing a variant of the Masslogger trojan designed to retrieve and exfiltrate...

What to expect when you're electing: Information hygiene and the human levers of disinformation

Editor's note: Related reading on Talos election security research: https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2020/07/what-to-expect-when-youre-electing.html https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2020/09/election-roundtable-video.html...

Beers with Talos ep. #92: Trending in Your Network — Disinformation

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 92 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded Aug. 26, 2020 Disinformation is front and center rig...

Threat Source newsletter for May 14, 2020

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. Our main focus this week is on Astaroth. This is a malware family that has been targeting Brazil with a variety of lures, including...

Threat Roundup for March 27 to April 3

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between March 27 and April 3. 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 characteristic...

Threat Roundup for March 13 to March 20

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between March 13 and March 20. 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...

Beers with Talos Ep. #74: Impacting civil society

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 74 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded March 2, 2020 We open up the show with a sugary sweet poem before talking about RSA and our annual trip through...

Stolen emails reflect Emotet's organic growth

By Jaeson Schultz Introduction Emotet has a penchant for stealing a victim's email, then impersonating that victim and sending copies of itself in reply. The malicious emails are delivered through a network of stolen outbound SMTP accounts. This relatively simple email-man-in-the-middle social...

Threat Roundup for Nov. 30 to Dec. 7

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Nov. 30 and Dec. 07. 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...

Beers with Talos EP26: Talos is Holding a Conference, and the Evolving Battle at the Edge

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Episode 26 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 EP26 Show Notes: Recorded 3/29/18 - Joel is sitting out this week, and Bill Largent from the Outreach...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities Within libxls

Vulnerabilities discovered by Marcin Noga of Cisco TalosTalos is releasing seven new vulnerabilities discovered within the libxls library: TALOS-2017-0403, TALOS-2017-0404, TALOS-2017-0426, TALOS-2017-0460, TALOS-2017-0461, TALOS-2017-0462, and TALOS-2017-0463. These vulnerabilities result in...

Preview: Cisco Talos at Black Hat USA 2026

We're looking forward to having some great conversations with those of you heading to the desert for Hacker Summer Camp 2026. We have a presence within the Cisco and Splunk booth 2633 during Black Hat where you can chat to us about our latest threat research, incident response, and how Talos powe...

From the field to the report and back again: How incident responders can use the Year in Review

Every year, Cisco Talos publishes Year in Review, a comprehensive look at the previous year's threat landscape. It's drawn from an enormous volume of telemetry, such as endpoint detections, network traffic, email data, and boots-on-the-ground Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR engagements. As...

Weathering the storm: In the midst of a Typhoon

Summary Cisco Talos has been closely monitoring reports of widespread intrusion activity against several major U.S. telecommunications companies. The activity, initially reported in late 2024 and later confirmed by the U.S. government, is being carried out by a highly sophisticated threat actor...

Why the toothbrush DDoS story fooled us all

Ill be the first to admit that, like many people on the internet last week, I got caught up in the toothbrush distributed denial-of-service attack that wasnt. I had a whole section on it written up in last weeks newsletter, and then I came across Graham Cluleys blog post debunking the whole thing...

A personal Year in Review to round out 2023

As youve probably seen by now, Talos released our 2023 Year in Review report last week. Its an extremely comprehensive look at the top threats, attacker trends and malware families from the past year with never-before-seen Cisco Talos telemetry. We have podcasts, long-form videos and even Reddit...

QR codes are relevant again for everyone from diners to threat actors

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Although we can probably largely consider the COVID-19 pandemic "over," many relics from the peak of lockdown and concerns over the virus are still around in mid-2023. Its still impossible to get a doctors appointment quickly, but man...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in popular Japanese word processing software could lead to arbitrary code execution, other issues

A Cisco Talos researcher discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered four vulnerabilities in Ichitaro, a popular word processing software in Japan produced by JustSystems that could lead to arbitrary code execution. Ichitaro uses the ATOK input method IME and uses the...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Microsoft Office class attribute double-free vulnerability

Marcin Icewall Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered a class attribute double-free vulnerability in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is a suite of tools used for productivity in both a corporate environment as well as by end-users. It offers a ran...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple integer overflow vulnerabilities in GPAC Project on Advanced Content

A Cisco Talos team member discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple integer overflow vulnerabilities in the GPAC Project on Advanced Content that could lead to memory corruption. The GPAC Project on Advanced Content is an open-source... This i...

Threat Roundup for July 30 to August 6

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 30 and Aug. 6. 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...

Talos Takes Ep. #51: COVID and Tax Day have perfectly aligned for spammers

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. We see tax scams every year — people offering to do your taxes for you, finding a larger return, etc. But this... This is...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure Sphere

Claudio Bozzato and Lilith of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos researchers recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere, a cloud-connected and custom SoC platform designed specifically with IoT application security... This ...

Beers with Talos Ep. #97: Getting to better security outcomes (feat. Wendy Nather)

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 97 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded Nov. 24, 2020 – On this episode, Mitch and Matt are...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Excel

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw.Cisco Talos recently discovered a code execution vulnerability in some versions of Microsoft Excel. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by tricking the victim into opening a specially crafted XLS file...

Threat Roundup for November 27 to December 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Nov. 27 and Dec. 4. 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: Remote code execution bugs in NVIDIA D3D10 driver

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in the NVIDIA D3D10 driver. This driver supports multiple GPUs that NVIDIA produces. An adversary could exploit these vulnerabilities by...

PROMETHIUM extends global reach with StrongPity3 APT

By Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura. News summaryThe threat actor behind StrongPity is not deterred despite being exposed multiple times over the past four years.They continue to expand their victimology and attack seemingly non related countries.This kind of continuous improveme...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Two vulnerabilities in Zoom could lead to code execution

A member of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in the popular Zoom video chatting application that could allow a malicious user to execute arbitrary code on victims’ machines. Video conferencing software has...

Threat Roundup for May 22 to May 29

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 22 and May 29. 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,...

Dynamic Data Resolver (DDR) — IDA Plugin 1.0 beta

By Holger Unterbrink Executive summaryStatic reverse-engineering in IDA can often be problematic. Certain values are calculated at run time, which makes it difficult to understand what a certain basic block is doing. If you try to perform dynamic analysis by debugging a piece of malware, the...

Threat Source newsletter for May 21, 2020

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. Beers with Talos chugs on during quarantine with the latest episode of “The In-Between.” Once again, the hosts talk about everything but...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Code execution vulnerability in 3S CODESYS

Carl Hurd of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an exploitable code execution vulnerability in 3S’ CODESYS Control SoftPLC runtime system. The system allows any embedded or PC device to convert into an IEC 61131-3-complaint industria...

Exploitable or Not Exploitable? Using REVEN to Examine a NULL Pointer Dereference.

Authored by Aleksandar Nikolic. Executive summary It can be very time-consuming to determine if a bug is exploitable or not. In this post, we’ll show how to decide if a vulnerability is exploitable by tracing back along the path of execution that led to a crash. In this case, we are using the...

Threat Round-up for May 19 - May 26

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 19 and May 26. 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,...

Knife Cutting the Edge: Disclosing a China-nexus gateway-monitoring AitM framework

Cisco Talos uncovered "DKnife," a fully featured gateway-monitoring and adversary-in-the-middle AitM framework comprising seven Linux-based implants that perform deep-packet inspection, manipulate traffic, and deliver malware via routers and edge devices. Based on the artifact metadata, DKnife ha...

Unmasking the new persistent attacks on Japan

Cisco Talos discovered malicious activities conducted by an unknown attacker since as early as January 2025, predominantly targeting organizations in Japan. The attacker has exploited the vulnerability CVE-2024-4577, a remote code execution RCE flaw in the PHP-CGI implementation of PHP on Windows...

Simple Mail Transfer Pirates: How threat actors are abusing third-party infrastructure to send spam

Attackers are abusing normal features of legitimate web sites to transmit spam, such as the traditional method of verifying the creation of a new account. This web infrastructure and its associated email infrastructure is otherwise used for legitimate purposes, which makes blocking these messages...

Tabletop exercises are headed to the next frontier: Space

I think we can all agree that tabletop exercises are a good thing. They allow organizations of all sizes to test their incident response plans without the potentially devastating effects of a real-world cyber attack or intrusion. As part of my role at Talos, Ive read hundreds of tabletop exercise...

Arid Viper disguising mobile spyware as updates for non-malicious Android applications

Since April 2022, Cisco Talos has been tracking a malicious campaign operated by the espionage-motivated Arid Viper advanced persistent threat APT group targeting Arabic-speaking Android users. In this campaign, the actors leverage custom mobile malware, also known as Android Package files APKs, ...

Attacks on web applications spike in third quarter, new Talos IR data shows

Quarterly threat report: Telecommunications and education are most-targeted verticals There was a notable increase in threats to web applications, accounting for 30 percent of the engagements Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR responded to in the third quarter of 2023, compared to 8 percent t...

Threat Roundup for October 13 to October 20

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Oct. 13 and Oct. 20. 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,...

New ShroudedSnooper actor targets telecommunications firms in the Middle East with novel Implants

Cisco Talos recently discovered a new malware family were calling "HTTPSnoop" being deployed against telecommunications providers in the Middle East. HTTPSnoop is a simple, yet effective, backdoor that consists of novel techniques to interface with Windows HTTP kernel drivers and devices to liste...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Authentication bypass, use-after-free vulnerabilities found in a library for the µC/OS open-source operating system

Kelly Leuschner of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in a library for µC/OS, an open-source operating system developed by Micrium. µC/OS is an embedded operating system that supports TCP/IP, USB, CAN bus and Modbus. The two...

Typhon Reborn V2: Updated stealer features enhanced anti-analysis and evasion capabilities

The developer of the Typhon Reborn information stealer released version 2 V2 in January, which included significant updates to its codebase and improved capabilities. Most notably, the new version features additional anti-analysis and anti-virtual machine VM capabilities to evade detection and ma...

HTML smugglers turn to SVG images

HTML smuggling is a technique attackers use to hide an encoded malicious script within an HTML email attachment or webpage. Once a victim receives the email and opens the attachment, their browser decodes and runs the script, which then assembles a malicious payload directly on the victims device...

Threat Round up for December 2 to December 9

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Dec. 2 and Dec. 9. 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,...