Threat Source newsletter for June 25, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We recently decided to replace our use of the terms "blacklist" and "whitelist" with "block list" and "allow list.” Even though these terms are commonly in use in the security industry, we will not go along with casually assigning...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution vulnerability in Firefox’s SharedWorkerService function

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Mozilla Firefox web browser contains a vulnerability in its SharedWorkerService function that could allow an attacker to gain the ability to remotely execute code on a target’s machine. This vulnerability...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for June 2020 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing more than 120 vulnerabilities across its array of products. While none of the vulnerabilities disclosed have been exploited in the wild, users of all Microsoft and Windows products are urged to update their softwar...

Threat Roundup for May 8 to May 15

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 8 and May 15. 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: 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 Excel...

Beers with Talos Ep. #79: The In-Between vol. 2 (It's a better name than Quittin' Time)

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 79 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 22, 2020 We are renaming these episodes. “Quittin’ time” was OK and all, but “The In-between” better...

Beers with Talos EP 30 - VPNFilter, the Unfiltered Story

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Episode 30 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 EP30 Show Notes: Recorded May 25, 2018 - As you can expect, this episode focuses on VPNFilter. We discu...

SamSam - The Evolution Continues Netting Over $325,000 in 4 Weeks

This post was written by Vitor Ventura Introduction Talos has been working in conjunction with Cisco IR Services on what we believe to be a new variant of the SamSam ransomware. This ransomware has been observed across multiple industries including Government, Healthcare and ICS. These attacks do...

[Webinar] Tales from the Frontlines: An exclusive briefing on Q2 incidents

!\Webinar\ Tales from the Frontlines: An exclusive briefing on Q2 incidentshttps://storage.ghost.io/c/af/a0/afa04ee3-414f-4481-8d23-7e7c146f192e/content/images/2026/08/2-1-no-copy.jpg Have you ever read the Talos IR Quarterly Trends report and wondered, "How did that phishing or ransomware campai...

The Hunter's Paradox: Is it time to embrace automated threat hunting?

Should we let AI run our threat hunts? The debate usually splits into two camps. One says, "Yes, obviously! The sheer scale of our security telemetry is impossible for humans to deal with." The other says, "Absolutely not! You can't trust an AI with something this important." The thing is, I thin...

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

Microsoft has released its monthly security update for June 2026, which includes 206 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 32 that Microsoft marked as "critical". Out of 32 "critical" entries, 28 are remote code execution RCE vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows services and...

MediaArea heap-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery & Research team recently disclosed four vulnerabilities in MediaArea MediaInfoLib library. The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective vendor, in adherence to Cisco 's third-party vulnerability disclosure policy. For...

Introducing EvidenceForge: Synthetic security logs that don’t look (as) fake

Security teams need high-quality, labeled datasets to train threat hunters and incident responders, validate detection logic, and develop robust analytic models. EvidenceForge helps teams overcome the limitations of anonymized or stale public datasets, while avoiding the cost and complexity of...

An overview of ransomware threats in Japan in 2025 and early detection insights from Qilin cases

In 2025, a total of 134 ransomware incidents were reported in Japan, marking a 17.5% increase compared to 2024. Among these, 22 incidents were attributed to Qilin, representing 16.4% of the total. In 2025, Qilin ransomware was highly active. Looking ahead to 2026, unless there is significant...

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

The Patch Tuesday for December of 2025 includes 57 vulnerabilities, including two that Microsoft marked as "critical." The remaining vulnerabilities listed are classified as "important." Microsoft assessed that exploitation of the two "critical" vulnerabilities is "less likely." CVE ‑2025‑62562 i...

Cisco Talos at Black Hat 2025: Briefings, booth talks and what to expect

Cisco Talos is back at Black Hat with new research, threat detection overviews and opportunities to connect with our team. Whether you're interested in what we're seeing in the threat landscape, detection engineering or real-world incident response, here's where and how to find us: Visit us at th...

Cybercriminal abuse of large language models

Cybercriminals are continuing to explore artificial intelligence AI technologies such as large language models LLMs to aid in their criminal hacking activities. Some cybercriminals have resorted to using uncensored LLMs or even custom-built criminal LLMs for illicit purposes. Advertised features ...

catdoc zero-day, NVIDIA, High-Logic FontCreator and Parallel vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery & Research team recently disclosed three zero-day vulnerabilities in catdoc, as well as vulnerabilities in Parallel, NVIDIA and High-Logic FontCreator 15. The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective vendors, in adheren...

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

Update 6/12/2025: Microsoft released an additional CVE CVE-2025-32717 . Details and SIDs have been reflected to include this additional vulnerability. Microsoft has released its monthly security update for June 2025, which includes 66 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 10 th...

Google Cloud Platform Data Destruction via Cloud Build

Background & Public Research Google Cloud Platform GCP Cloud Build is a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment CI/CD service offered by Google that is utilized to automate the building, testing and deployment of applications. Orca Security published an article describing certain aspects of...

Bidirectional communication via polyrhythms and shuffles: Without Jon the beat must go on

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Bidirectional communication is foundational to a well-built team regardless of environment. It's critical in information security to be able to drive a conversation up the ladder and down and not lose the critical elements. One of th...

Hidden between the tags: Insights into spammers’ evasion techniques in HTML Smuggling

Cisco Talos has spotted several malicious email campaigns over the past few months that disguise JavaScript code within HTML email attachments, a technique commonly known as "HTML Smuggling." Cisco Talos has noticed that some industry verticals were targeted more than others by email threats usin...

How we can separate botnets from the malware operations that rely on them

As I covered in last weeks newsletter, law enforcement agencies from around the globe have been touting recent botnet disruptions affecting the likes of some of the largest threat actors and malware families. Operation Endgame, which Europol touted as the "largest ever operation against botnets,"...

Talos joins CISA to counter cyber threats against non-profits, activists and other at-risk communities

Cisco Talos is delighted to share updates about our ongoing partnership with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA to combat cybersecurity threats facing civil society organizations. Talos has partnered with CISA on several initiatives through the Joint Cyber Defense...

The internet is already scary enough without April Fool’s jokes

I feel like over the past several years, the "holiday" that is April Fools Day has really died down. At this point, there are few headlines you can write that would be more ridiculous than something youd find on a news site any day of the week. And there are so many more serious issues that are...

How are attackers using QR codes in phishing emails and lure documents?

Though QR codes were once on the verge of extinction, many consumers are used to seeing them in the wild for ordering at restaurants, or as mainstays on storefront doors informing customers how they can sign up for a newsletter or score a sweet deal. The use of QR codes saw a resurgence during th...

Threat Roundup for September 22 to September 29

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Sept. 22 and Sept. 29. 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,...

Cybercriminals target graphic designers with GPU miners

Cybercriminals are abusing Advanced Installer, a legitimate Windows tool used for creating software packages, to drop cryptocurrency-mining malware on infected machines. This activity has been ongoing since at least November 2021. The attacker uses Advanced Installer to package other legitimate...

The rise of AI-powered criminals: Identifying threats and opportunities

AIs influence is growing across the security space, bringing with it major implications for cybercriminals and defenders. The recent adoption of AI has raised significant concerns for cybersecurity due to the many ways that criminals can use AI for disruption and profit. Defenders and law...

It’s really OK to take a break sometimes, especially in security

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. You probably already know this by now, but May is Mental Health Awareness Month across the globe. Many people will apply this time of reflection and education to their personal lives -- its easy to discuss anxiety, depression and othe...

What Old is New Again and What's Old is Me?

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Whats old is new again and whats old is still old. The fact that we are seeing a comeback of this USB thumb drive nonsense is giving me heartburn, and a headache, and my left eye is twitching … and maybe numbness in my legs? Yes, I am...

2022 Year in Review: APTs Livestream Replay

Did you miss our livestream focused on the APT section in the Cisco Talos Year in Review report? Join host Mitch Neff and special guests Jacob Finn, Asheer Malhotra, and Vitor Ventura as they discuss Talos findings and experiences tracking APTs in 2022. This livestream sheds light into the topic ...

Talos EMEA Monthly Threat Update: How do you know if cyber insurance is right for you?

On September's edition of the Monthly EMEA Threat Update, Hazel Burton and Martin Lee break down cyber insurance. Although many businesses and organizations will think insurance will only help them in a worst-case scenario, that worst-case scenario comes for us all eventually. Martin and Hazel...

Threat Advisory: DoubleZero

Overview The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine released an advisory on March 22, 2022 disclosing another wiper dubbed "DoubleZero" targeting Ukrainian enterprises during Russia's invasion of the country. This wiper was detected as early as March 17, 2022. DoubleZero is yet another...

Talos Takes Ep. #79: Emotet's back with the worst type of holiday present

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. Emotet is back, and it brought the worst possible holiday present just in time for peak spam season, too!. We... This is...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple code execution vulnerabilities in LibreCAD

Lilith of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered three vulnerabilities in LibreCAD’s libdfxfw open-source library. This library reads and writes .dxf and .dwg files — the primary file format for vector graphics in CAD... This is only the...

Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities exploited once again for ransomware, this time with Babuk

By Chetan Raghuprasad and Vanja Svajcer, with contributions from Caitlin Huey. Cisco Talos recently discovered a malicious campaign deploying variants of the Babuk ransomware predominantly affecting users in the U.S. with smaller number of infections in U.K., Germany, Ukraine, Finland, Brazil,...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Oct. 2021 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Asheer Malhotra. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 78 vulnerabilities in the company’s various software, hardware and firmware offerings. This month’s release is particularly notable because there are only... This is only th...

Talos Takes Ep. #69: Our armadillo in shining armor

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 also preach the importance of multi-factor authentication. But what happens when the bad guys start going after... This...

Talos Takes Ep: #65: How several RAT campaigns in Latin America are connected

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. As more people around the world start to get vaccinated against COVID-19, travel is becoming easier, especially during...

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

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Jaeson Schultz. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 117 vulnerabilities across its suite of products, by far the most in a month this year. Today’s Patch Tuesday includes three vulnerabilities that Microsoft states are... This...

Talos Takes Ep. #54: Incident response is just as much about the relationships as anything else

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. Brad Garnett, Cisco Talos Incident Response's fearless leader, joins the show this week to expound more on his recent...

Threat Roundup for April 23 to April 30

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between April 23 and April 30. 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... This is on...

Threat Roundup for February 26 to March 5

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Feb. 26 and March 5. 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: Code execution, memory corruption vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit to assist users with image conversion, creation, editing and more. There...

Threat Source newsletter for July 23, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. While ransomware attacks continue to hog all the headlines, cryptocurrency miners are still running the background, sapping computing power from unsuspecting victims. We have what we believe is the first documentation of a new...

Threat Roundup for July 6-13

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 6 and 13. 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 ...

Threat Roundup for June 29 to July 6th

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 June 29 and July 6. As with previous roundups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, it will summarize the threats we've observed by...

Beers with Talos EP 19: The "Best" of BWT

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Episode 19 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 EP19 Show Notes: Quotes intended, we think you know why. Mitch takes control to present the best of the...

Don’t swing at everything

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Lately I've found myself thinking a lot about the Australian TV series Mr. Inbetween IMDb 8.7/10 -- not because I'm a hitman for hire, but because I literally feel in-between. Specifically, in-between what I'd call the "pre-Mythos" a...