Threat Source newsletter for June 4, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Our social media content and promotion are on pause this week as there are more important issues being discussed and other voices that need to be heard. However, we still wanted to provide users with the latest IOCs and threats we’re seeing. Upcoming public...

Threat Spotlight: Astaroth — Maze of obfuscation and evasion reveals dark stealer

By Nick Biasini, Edmund Brumaghin and Nick Lister. Cisco Talos is detailing an information stealer, Astaroth, that has been targeting Brazil with a variety of lures, including COVID-19 for the past nine to 12 months.Complex maze of obfuscation and anti-analysis/evasion techniques implemented by...

Beers with Talos Ep. #78: Fingerprints and hunting parties

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 78 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded April 10, 2020 We have a couple great topics today — and only one of them is a COVID-19 related topic. So, it...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Intel Raid Web Console 3 denial-of-service bugs

Geoff Serrao of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two denial-of-service vulnerabilities in the web API functionality of Intel RAID Web Console 3. The Raid Web Console is a web-based application that provides several configuration...

Video: What defenders can learn from past ransomware attacks

The Cisco Talos Incident Response "Stories from the Field" video series returns with another entry from Matt Aubert. This time, Matt discusses ransomware infections he's seen in real-time, and shares what defenders can learn from others' mistakes and recovery. Is it ever smart to pay attackers'...

Threat Source newsletter (Feb. 20, 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. We’ve got more ways than ever for you to get Talos content. We continue to grow our YouTube page with the second entry in the “Stories...

Threat Source newsletter (Feb. 6, 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. There’s never been a better time to be into cyber security podcasts. Our Podcasts page on TalosIntelligence.com got a facelift this week...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Epee Levin Packet Deserialization Code Execution Vulnerability

This vulnerability was discovered by Lilith of Cisco Talos. Overview The Epee library, which is leveraged by a large number of cryptocurrencies, contains an exploitable code execution vulnerability in the Levin deserialization functionality. An attacker can send a specially crafted network packet...

Cryptomining Campaign Returns Coal and Not Diamond

Executive summary Soon after a launch of a new cryptocurrency, Bitvote, in January, Talos discovered a new mining campaign affecting systems in India, Indonesia, Vietnam and several other countries that were tied to Bitvote. Apart from the fact that the attackers have chosen to target the new...

Player 1 Limps Back Into the Ring - Hello again, Locky!

This post was authored by Alex Chiu, Warren Mercer, and Jaeson Schultz. Sean Baird and Matthew Molyett contributed to this post.Back in May, the Necurs spam botnet jettisoned Locky ransomware in favor of the new Jaff ransomware variant. However, earlier this month Kaspersky discovered a...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2026 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jaeson Schultz Microsoft has released its monthly security update for May 2026, which includes 137 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 31 that Microsoft marked as "critical". In this month's release, Microsoft has not observed any of the included vulnerabilities being...

Eclipse and STMicroelectronics vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery & Research team recently disclosed three vulnerabilities found in Eclipse ThreadX and four vulnerabilities in the STMicroelectronics fork of ThreadX called X-CUBE-AZRTOS. The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for April 2025 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

Microsoft has released its monthly security update for April of 2025 which includes 126 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 11 that Microsoft marked as "critical". In this month's release, none of the included vulnerabilities have been observed by Microsoft to be exploited in...

Exploring vulnerable Windows drivers

This post is the result of research into the real-world application of the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver BYOVD technique along with Cisco Talos' series of posts about malicious Windows drivers. Some of this research was presented at the AVAR conference in Chennai at the beginning of December...

Talos discovers 11 vulnerabilities between Microsoft, Adobe software disclosed on Patch Tuesday

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team recently discovered 11 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows CLIPSP.SYS and Adobe Acrobat Reader that were all disclosed this week as part of the companys regular security updates. For more on Patch Tuesday, check out Talos blog post here. Eight of the...

TimbreStealer campaign targets Mexican users with financial lures

Cisco Talos has discovered a new campaign operated by a threat actor distributing a previously unknown malware were calling "TimbreStealer." This threat actor was observed distributing TimbreStealer via a spam campaign using Mexican tax-related themes starting in at least November 2023. The threa...

What’s the point of press releases from threat actors?

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. As a former reporter, Ive seen my fair share of press releases. But one from a threat actor was definitely a new one for me last week. ALPHV aka BlackCat publicly took credit for a massive cyber attack against MGM, a resort, gambling...

Why are there so many malware-as-a-service offerings?

Whether known as commodity malware or "as-a-service," threat actors have long been turning to their fellow adversaries in the hopes of selling off their tools and opening a new stream of revenue. When used legitimately, as-a-service software is when a third-party company offers its software to...

DDoS attacks want to make sure you haven’t forgotten about them

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Distributed denial-of-service attacks DDoS have been around since before I even knew how to turn a computer on. These types of attacks, I feel, have the same vibe as the term "computer virus" -- something we used to talk about in the...

Threat Roundup for April 28 to May 5

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between April 28 and May 5. 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,...

Operation “Armor Piercer:” Targeted attacks in the Indian subcontinent using commercial RATs

By Asheer Malhotra, Vanja Svajcer and Justin Thattil. Cisco Talos is tracking a campaign targeting government personnel in India using themes and tactics similar to APT36 aka Mythic Leopard and Transparent Tribe.This campaign distributes malicious documents and archives to deliver the Netwire...

Threat Source newsletter (Aug. 19, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. I'm writing this on Tuesday morning on account of vacation again, so apologies if we miss any major stories. You certainly don't want to miss our latest blog post on the Neurevt remote access trojan that's... This is only the...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Information disclosure, privilege escalation vulnerabilities in IOBit Advanced SystemCare Ultimate

Cory Duplantis of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in IOBit Advanced SystemCare Ultimate. IOBit Advanced SystemCare Ultimate is a system optimizer that promises to remove unwanted files and... This is only the...

Threat Roundup for May 14 to May 21

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 14 and May 21. 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,...

Threat Source newsletter (May 20, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We know a lot of you may be tired of "content" after RSA week. But we have some more for you! And specifically related to RSA, Cisco Talos Incident Response has new case studies out detailing a few recent engagements... This is on...

Beers with Talos Ep. #104: Supply chain has Matt hopping mad like a kangaroo

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 104 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 March 30,... This is only the beginning! Please vis...

Beers with Talos Ep. #98: Why ransomware actors are (and aren’t) targeting health care

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 98 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 early November 2020. This is an episode we recorded ...

Talos tools of the trade

By Andrea Marcelli and Holger Unterbrink. If you're looking for something to keep you busy while we're all stuck inside during the holidays, Cisco Talos has a few tools for you you can play with in the coming days and weeks. We recently updated GhIDA to work with the latest version of IDA and we...

Vulnerability Spotlight: DoS, code execution vulnerabilities in EIP Stack Group OpENer

Martin Zeiser and Jared Rittle of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw.Executive summary Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in the Ethernet/IP function of EIP Stack Group OpENer. OpENer is an Ethernet/IP stack for I/O adapter devices. It supports...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in WebKit

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw.Executive summary The WebKit browser engine contains multiple vulnerabilities in various functions of the software. A malicious web page code could trigger multiple use-after-free errors, which could lead t...

Threat Source newsletter (Nov. 12, 2020)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We’re back after a few-week hiatus! And to celebrate, we just dropped some new research on the CRAT trojan that’s bringing some ransomware friends along with it. This blog post has all the details of this threat along with what yo...

Beers with Talos ep. #94: Nigel is marching on, victorious and glorious

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 94 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 Sept. 25, 2020 Today is Nigel’s last episode as a...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerabilities in Allen-Bradley Flex I/O

Jared Rittle of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Allen-Bradley Flex input/output system contains multiple denial-of-service vulnerabilities in its ENIP request path data segment. These bugs exist specifically in the 1794-AENT FLEX I/O modular platform. It...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple SQL, code injection vulnerabilities in OpenSIS

Yuri Kramarz and Yves Younan discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw Cisco Talos researchers recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the OpenSIS software family. OpenSIS is a student information management system for K-12 students. It is available in commercial and open-sour...

Threat Roundup for August 7 to August 14

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14. 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,...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Aug. 2020 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 120 vulnerabilities across its array of products. Sixteen of the vulnerabilities are considered “critical,” including one that Microsoft says is currently being exploited in the wild. Users of all Microsoft and...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Two vulnerabilities in SoftPerfect RAM Disk

A Cisco Talos researcher discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos researchers recently discovered that a specific driver in the SoftPerfect RAM disk could allow an adversary to delete files on an arbitrary basis and disclose sensitive information. SoftPerfect RAM Disk is a...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerability in NVIDIA driver

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Executive summaryThe NVWGF2UMXCFG.DLL driver contains a denial-of-service vulnerability that an attacker could use to disrupt processes over a virtual machine. An adversary could exploit this bug by providing a special...

Beers with Talos Ep. #76: When security hits home (and stays)

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 76 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 27, 2020 Our goal is always to talk to you about what's on our minds. Right now, we are pretty sure we all...

COVID-19 relief package provides another platform for bad actors

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to yield new subject matter that bad actors can turn into fodder for enticing victims into clicking on malicious links and attachments. On March 27, the CARES Act was signed into law by the President, enacting a wide range of stimulus packages designed to a...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerability in GStreamer

Peter Wang of Cisco ASIG discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a denial-of-service vulnerability in GStreamer, a pipeline-based multimedia framework. GStreamer contains gst-rtsp-server, an open-source library that allows the user to build RTSP servers...

Beers with Talos Ep. #72: Getting to Patch Day - Understanding Vulnerability Risks and Options

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 72 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded Jan. 31, 2020 When a vulnerability is released, regardless if it has a website and logo or not, we need to...

Threat Source newsletter (Feb. 13, 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. This month’s Microsoft Patch Tuesday was particularly hefty, with the company disclosing nearly 100 vulnerabilities — three of which Tal...

ClamAV team shows off new Mussels dependency build automation tool

By Micah Snyder. Today I'm very excited, and a little bit nervous, to unveil Mussels. Mussels is a cross-platform, general-purpose dependency build automation tool. You might compare it with Vcpkg, Conan, or Buildout. It serves a similar purpose, but the approach is a little different. Mussels is...

Talos, Cisco Incident Response team up to offer more protection than ever

By Sean Mason Over the years, I've had the honor and privilege to work within some of the greatest security teams on the planet, working alongside such passionate and talented people at Cisco makes delivering this announcement perhaps the greatest honor yet. The best security organizations on the...

IDA-minsc Wins Second Place in Hex-Rays Plugins Contest

Introduction Ali Rizvi-Santiago of Cisco Talos recently tied for second place in the IDA plugin contest with a plugin named "IDA-minsc." IDA is a multi-processor disassembler and debugger created by the company Hex-Rays and this year there were a total of four winners with nine submissions total...

Beers with Talos EP 37: Snort 3 Beta Uses Multithreading. It’s Super Effective!

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 37 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. 37 show notes: Recorded Sept. 7, 2018 — We have Joel back this week and he is very happy to have himse...

Threat Roundup for July 20-27

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between July 20 and 27. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by...

UAT-7237 targets Taiwanese web hosting infrastructure

Cisco Talos discovered UAT-7237, a Chinese-speaking advanced persistent threat APT group active since at least 2022, which has significant overlaps with UAT-5918. UAT-7237 conducted a recent intrusion targeting web infrastructure entities within Taiwan and relies heavily on the use of open-source...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for February 2025 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

Microsoft has released its monthly security update for February of 2025 which includes 63 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 4 that Microsoft marked as "critical" and one marked as "moderate." There are two notable "critical" vulnerabilities. The first is CVE-2025-21376, whi...