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...

Reporting from Vegas: Networking, AI, and good boys

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Howdy friends, and hello from Cisco Live U.S., here in sunny and very hot Las Vegas! An interesting quirk of being sent to one of these events is you learn to understand your limits as a person. Cisco Live is a three-day event, and i...

Less panic patching, more precision

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Recently, Martin closed his introduction with a warning: Ready or not, the time of much patching is coming. I've been chewing on that one for a while because I'm rethinking my own enrichment pipelines along these lines, and the...

UAT-8302 and its box full of malware

Cisco Talos is disclosing UAT-8302, a sophisticated, China-nexus advanced persistent threat APT group targeting government entities in South America since at least late 2024 and government agencies in southeastern Europe in 2025. After successful compromises, UAT-8302 deploys multiple custom-made...

New Dohdoor malware campaign targets education and health care

Cisco Talos discovered an ongoing malicious campaign since at least as early as December 2025 by a threat actor we track as "UAT-10027," delivering a previously undisclosed backdoor dubbed "Dohdoor." Dohdoor utilizes the DNS-over-HTTPS DoH technique for command-and-control C2 communications and h...

UAT-7290 targets high value telecommunications infrastructure in South Asia

Cisco Talos is disclosing a sophisticated threat actor we track as UAT-7290, who has been active since at least 2022. UAT-7290 is tasked with gaining initial access as well as conducting espionage focused intrusions against critical infrastructure entities in South Asia. UAT-7290's arsenal includ...

Strings in the maze: Finding hidden strengths and gaps in your team

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. "The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible... For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others." ― Cormac McCarthy, "Blood Meridian" Earlier thi...

IR Trends Q3 2025: ToolShell attacks dominate, highlighting criticality of segmentation and rapid response

Threat actors predominately exploited public-facing applications for initial access this quarter, with this tactic appearing in over 60 percent of Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR engagements - a notable increase from less than 10 percent last quarter. This spike is largely attributable to ...

BRB, pausing for a "Sanctuary Moon" marathon

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Yesterday, Cisco Talos debuted the first Humans of Talos episode, where I interviewed Hazel Burton, a face and voice you're probably familiar with. In our conversation, Hazel shared not just the story of how she found her way onto th...

Unmasking the new Chaos RaaS group attacks

Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR recently observed attacks by Chaos, a relatively new ransomware-as-a-service RaaS group conducting big-game hunting and double extortion attacks. Chaos RaaS actors initiated low-effort spam flooding, escalating to voice-based social engineering for access,...

We can try to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap, but that doesn’t necessarily mean more jobs for defenders

I have written about the dreaded " cybersecurity skills gap" more times than I can remember in this newsletter, but I feel like it's time to revisit this topic again. That's because the White House announced a new initiative last week for the U.S. government called the " Service for America"...

Apple and Google are taking steps to curb the abuse of location-tracking devices — but what about others?

Since the advent of products like the Tile and Apple AirTag, both used to keep track of easily lost items like wallets, keys and purses, bad actors and criminals have found ways to abuse them. These adversaries can range from criminals just looking to do something illegal for a range of reasons,...

7 common mistakes companies make when creating an incident response plan and how to avoid them

Cisco Talos recently covered the basics of NIS2, a new set of requirements for cybersecurity and security incident disclosures set to take effect next year in the European Union. As part of these new guidelines, organizations with operations in the EU must have up-to-date "incident handling"...

You can try to hide your firmware from Kelly Patterson, but she’ll find it (and break it)

How her work illustrates the difference Talos vulnerability research team makes When Kelly Patterson first learned how to code by making small programs in her high school class, she preferred breaking her creations to building them. Shed make a game and then spend double the time debugging that...

Code leaks are causing an influx of new ransomware actors

Ransomware gangs are consistently rebranding or merging with other groups, as highlighted in our 2022 Year in Review, or these actors work for multiple ransomware-as-a-service RaaS outfits at a time, and new groups are always emerging. This trend is already continuing this year. Since 2021, there...

How Joe Marshall helps defend everything from electrical grids to grain co-ops across multiple continents

Joe Marshall was a security practitioner before he even knew it. Marshall started his career in information technology as a systems administrator. On the surface, he jokes that he was a "white-collar plumber" -- fixing IT issues as they arose, handing out new credentials and asking users if they...

New Horabot campaign targets the Americas

Cisco Talos has observed a threat actor deploying a previously unidentified botnet program Talos is calling "Horabot," which delivers a known banking trojan and spam tool onto victim machines in a campaign that has been ongoing since at least November 2020. The threat actor appears to be targetin...

Fighting the Good Fight: Life inside the Talos Ukraine Task Unit

As we spoke about in the new ThreatWise TV documentary, "People Matter: A look back on how Cisco Talos has been supporting Ukraine," war isnt something that often appears in an organizations business continuity or disaster recovery plans. In the months leading up to Russias invasion of Ukraine,...

Threat Source newsletter (Jan. 19, 2023): Talent retention and institutional knowledge

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Talent retention and institutional knowledge go hand in hand. Both are critical to ensuring the security of your network environment. To that end, I want to talk briefly about why talent retention isnt just about money. So I am going ...

Talos Year in Review 2022

This report represents an unprecedented effort within Cisco to tell a comprehensive story of our work in the past year, relying on a wide variety of data and expertise. Download the Report As a large security organization with global reach, the data we use as the basis for our research presents u...

Emotet coming in hot

Emotet is a ubiquitous and well-known banking trojan that has evolved over the years to become a very successful modular botnet capable of dropping a variety of other threats. Even after a global takedown campaign in early 2021 disrupted the botnet, it reemerged later that year, rebuilding its...

Video: How propaganda can spread on social media via memes, fake news

Cisco Talos is well-known for its work in spotting and defeating fake news, disinformation and misinformation. And state-sponsored actors, unwitting social media users and even direct government agencies have played a part in spreading fake news during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In this video,...

Threat Roundup for September 30 to October 7

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 30 and Oct. 7. 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...

0xCC'd

We spend a lot of time preparing for Blackhat, and as part of putting together content for the show, one of our best, Lurene Grenier, submitted an unexpected piece of content: a poem. Now this poem isn't our regular security research or a shiny piece of corporate correspondence which we would nev...

Threat Source newsletter (July 14, 2022) — Are virtual IDs worth the security risk of saving a few seconds in the TSA line?

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. I’ve started flying again on a somewhat regular basis now that work conferences and out-of-state vacations are becoming a thing again. I took about 18 months or so off flying during the peak of the pandemic, but now...

Bitter APT adds Bangladesh to their targets

Cisco Talos has observed an ongoing malicious campaign since August 2021 from the Bitter APT group that appears to target users in Bangladesh, a change from the attackers' usual victims.As part of this, there's a new trojan based on Apost Talos is calling "ZxxZ," that, among other... This is only...

Talos Takes Ep. #77: How to connect to (and safely use) public WiFi

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. Whenever we walk into a bar or restaurant, it's almost a given that we're going to ask the bartender or server:... This is...

Threat Roundup for October 29 to November 5

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

Talos Takes Ep. #66: Dude, where's my bandwidth?

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. “Proxyware” sounds like a complicated topic that you’re too afraid to ask about. But really, it’s just software that... Th...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Use-after-free vulnerability in Foxit PDF Reader

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a use-after-free vulnerability in the Foxit PDF Reader. Foxit PDF Reader is one of the most popular PDF document readers currently available. As a complete... This is only the...

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

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Nick Biasini. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 89 vulnerabilities across its suite of products, the most in any month so far this year. There are 14 critical vulnerabilities as part of this release and one considered of “lo...

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

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Asheer Malhotra. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 83 vulnerabilities across its suite of products to kick-off 2021. There are only 10 critical vulnerabilities as part of this release, while there are two moderate-severity...

Threat Roundup for September 11 to September 18

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 11 and Sept. 18. 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...

Better email classification, courtesy of you

Cisco customers with Email Security Appliances ESA or Cloud Email Security CES accounts already know the benefits of Cisco’s email filtering. Every day, millions of malicious emails are automatically sent to the trash bin. Cisco encourages customers to participate in honing those filters by...

Attribution: A Puzzle

By Martin Lee, Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura. Introduction The attribution of cyber attacks is hard. It requires collecting diverse intelligence, analyzing it and deciding who is responsible. Rarely does the evidence available to researchers reach a level of proof that would be acceptable in...

Threat Source newsletter for Aug. 13, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. It’s really tough to attribute cyber attacks. We know it. You know it. But why is that, exactly? And why do we want to attribute attacks so badly anyway? In our latest blog post, we look at why attribution is challenging, and what...

Threat Roundup for July 24 to July 31

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 24 and July 31. 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 for July 2, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. Our latest research you should catch up on is the Valak malware. This information-stealer sneaks its way onto victim machines by hijacking legitimate email threads. The threat actors send their phishing emails and attachments in...

Beers with Talos Ep. #85: The In-Between, Vol. 5

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 85 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify Stitcher If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded May 29, 2020 Prod. Note: Things are a hot mess rig...

Beers with Talos Ep. #52: I don't trust you because I care

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 52 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 26, 2019 - Since Craig decided to skip the podcast today, we decided to invite one of Austin’s top actual security...

Threat Roundup for August 3-10

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 Aug. 3 - 10. 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...

Threat Roundup for July 13-20

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 13 and 20. 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...

Talos Threat Research Summit at Cisco Live US 2018

Cisco Talos presents a conference by Defenders, for Defenders. Talos had one goal in mind when creating a brand new conference: Make something that we'd want to attend ourselves. As such, the Talos Threat Research Summit is aimed at being a one-day conference by defenders, for defenders. This...

Not So Crystal Clear - Zeus Variant Spoils Ukrainian Holiday

This post was authored by Edmund Brumaghin with contributions from Ben Baker, Dave Maynor and Matthew Molyett. Introduction Talos has observed a cyber attack which was launched using the official website of Ukraine-based accounting software developer Crystal Finance Millennium CFM. This vector is...

Beers with Talos EP 15: Landing a Job, Phishing Midstream, and Paul’s IDA Palette

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Episode 15 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:img border="0" data-original-height="45" data-original-width="160" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E-RSSZ9jbUY/WaWCkLGZnZI/AAAAAAAAAJE/Ciiz-Si4oA0cgR9tMGSGbT9336qr...

Begun, the Patch Wars have

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. We all knew, to some degree or another, that this summer was going to a hot mess. I don't mean FIFA drama or record setting heat waves. I mean the slow but steady momentum that AI frontier models were accruing for vulnerability...