Generating FLIRT signatures for Nim and other non-C programming languages

Adversaries are increasingly writing malware in programming languages such as Go, Rust, or Nim, because they present challenges to investigators using reverse-engineering tools designed to work best against the C family of languages. Its often difficult for reverse engineers examining non-C...

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...

Talos Takes 128: Year in Review - Ransomware and Commodity Loaders Edition

Were back with the final year in review focused episode. This time the focus is on the ever broadening ransomware landscape and the commodity malware loaders that often support it. Ill be joined by one of the researchers from the year in review report, Aliza Johnson to talk about what we saw on t...

TEST-2022 Talos Year in Review Report-TEST

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Small-time cybercrime is about to explode — We aren't ready

By Nick Biasini. The cybersecurity industry tends to focus on extremely large-scale or sophisticated, state-sponsored attacks. Rightfully so, as it can be the most interesting, technically speaking. When most people think of cybercrime they think of large-scale breaches because that's what...

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...

Threat Source newsletter (June 16, 2022) — Three top takeaways from Cisco Live

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. I’m still decompressing from Cisco Live and the most human interaction I’ve had in a year and a half. But after spending a few days on the show floor and interacting with everyone, there are a... This is only the...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in Open Automation Software Platform could lead to information disclosure, denial of service

Jared Rittle of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered eight vulnerabilities in the Open Automation Software Platform that could allow an adversary to carry out a variety of malicious actions, including improperly authenticating into...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2022 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Jaeson Schultz. Microsoft returned to its normal monthly patching volume in May, disclosing and fixing 74 vulnerabilities as part of the company’s latest security update. This month’s Patch Tuesday includes seven critical vulnerabilities after Microsoft...

Transparent Tribe campaign uses new bespoke malware to target Indian government officials

By Asheer Malhotra and Justin Thattil with contributions from Kendall McKay. Cisco Talos has observed a new Transparent Tribe campaign targeting Indian government and military entities. While the actors are infecting victims with CrimsonRAT, their well-known malware of choice, they are also...

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...

Threat Source newsletter (March 17, 2022) — Channelling productive worry to help Ukraine

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Cisco Talos continues to be heads-down working on the current Ukraine situation. This is incredibly difficult for everyone across the globe, especially for those directly affected. But that doesn’t mean those of... Th...

Time to secure hybrid work for 2022, not 2002

By Nick Biasini, with contributions from Vitor Ventura. Editor’s note: This post is the first in a new series from Talos looking at high-level topics across the cybersecurity space. Our researchers rely on years of expertise, data, and tremendous visibility; applying what we can learn from...

Talos Takes Ep. #70: Let's put a positive spin on this whole working from home thing for once

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 part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we're releasing a special series of Talos Takes episodes focused on...

Downtime on Talos Intelligence

TalosIntelligence.com will be down for a short time on Sept. 17 around 10 a.m. ET while we perform some routine maintenance on the site. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We expect the interruption will only last for about 30 minutes. This is only the beginning! Please visit the...

Threat Roundup for August 20 to August 27

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 20 and Aug. 27. 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 (Aug. 26, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. We have RATs on RATs on RATs over the past few weeks. And last week, we found a few more heading to Latin America to target users and try to steal their login credentials. The threat actor in this case has some compelling... This i...

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...

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

By Jon Munshaw, with contributions from Edmund Brumaghin. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 51 vulnerabilities across its suite of products, breaking last month’s 16-month record of the fewest vulnerabilities disclosed in a month by the company. There... This is...

Threat Roundup for May 28 to June 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 28 and June 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,...

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...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Information disclosure vulnerability in macOS SMB server

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an exploitable integer overflow vulnerability in Apple macOS’ SMB server that could lead to information disclosure. Server Message Block SMB is a network... This is only the...

ObliqueRAT returns with new campaign using hijacked websites

By Asheer Malhotra. Cisco Talos has observed another malware campaign that utilizes malicious Microsoft Office documents maldocs to spread the remote access trojan RAT ObliqueRAT. This campaign targets organizations in South Asia.ObliqueRAT has been linked to the Transparent Tribe APT group in th...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Foxit PDF Reader JavaScript engine

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw.Executive summary Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Foxit PDF Reader’s JavaScript engine. Foxit PDF Reader is a commonly used PDF reader that contains many features, including the...

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...

Threat Source newsletter for Sept. 3, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We recently uncovered a series of email campaigns utilizing links to malicious documents hosted on legitimate file-sharing platforms to spread malware. The campaigns distributed various malware payloads including Gozi ISFB, ZLoade...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Internet Systems Consortium BIND server DoS

Emanuel Almeida of Cisco Systems discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Internet Systems Consortium’s BIND server contains a denial-of-service vulnerability that exists when processing TCP traffic through the libuv library. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by flooding t...

Threat Source newsletter for July 30, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. Adversaries love to use headlines as part of their spam campaigns. From COVID-19, to Black Lives Matter and even Black Friday every year, the bad guys are wanting to capitalize on current events. Why is this the case, and when do...

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 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...

Threat Roundup for May 29 to June 5

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

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,...

Threat Roundup for November 2 to November 9

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Nov. 02 and Nov. 09. 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 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...

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...

Arbitrary Code Execution Vulnerabilities in MuPDF Identified and Patched

Talos is disclosing the presence of two vulnerabilities in the Artifex MuPDF renderer. MuPDF is a lightweight PDF parsing and rendering library featuring high fidelity graphics, high speed, and compact code size which makes it a fairly popular PDF library for embedding in different projects,...

Threat Round-up for May 05 - May 12

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 05 and May 12. 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,...

WolfSSL, GeoVision, VTK vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery & Research team recently disclosed three vulnerabilities in WolfSSF, fourteen in GeoVision, and one vulnerability in VTK-DICOM. The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective vendors, in adherence to Cisco 's third-party...

Scripting the disassembler: Local agentic reverse engineering through vbdec’s live COM object model

Analysis tools do not need AI built in to support agentic workflows; they simply need to expose their data through an external scripting interface. Even traditional graphical user interface GUI applications can be made AI-accessible by publishing their internal object models, allowing agents to...

A tale of two eras

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. To the surprise of absolutely no one who has seen my face, I'm one of the younger employees at Talos. As my industry veteran colleagues were buying the first iPods, navigating the switch from dial-up to broadband, saying goodbye to...

The art of being ungovernable

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. " It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can't be governed at all. Or if they could, I never heard of it." ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men Most of my career has been built on dichotomy:...

From PDB strings to MaaS: Tracking a commodity BadIIS ecosystem used by Chinese-speaking threat

Cisco Talos has uncovered a BadIIS variant -- identifiable by its embedded "demo.pdb" strings -- that functions as commodity malware. This variant is likely sold or shared among multiple Chinese-speaking cybercrime groups that operate under a malware-as-a-service MaaS model for continuous...

Unplug your way to better code

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Hey, you. Yeah, you! The person endlessly scrolling or typing away at their computer. Did you touch grass today? It's just an expression, but if nature's your thing, that works just fine. What I do mean is that due to the nature of t...

2025 Talos Year in Review: Speed, scale, and staying power

The 2025 Talos Year in Review is now available to view online. The pace and scale of adversary activity in 2025 placed sustained pressure on security teams across industries. As with each annual report, our goal at Talos is to provide the security community with a clear analysis of the tactics,...

Agentic AI security: Why you need to know about autonomous agents now

Agentic AI is making headlines worldwide for its potential force-multiplying capabilities, and organizations are understandably intrigued by how it can improve throughput and capabilities. However, as with any technological revolution, unforeseen issues are inevitable, and agentic AI is no...

Family group chats: Your (very last) line of cyber defense

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter, and happy Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Like everyone under the age of 35 who has at least one father, my dad sends me advice on online safety at least once a week. Does he work in information security? No. He's a recently retired...

Cybercriminals camouflaging threats as AI tool installers

Cisco Talos has discovered new threats, including the ransomware CyberLock, LuckyGh0$t, and a newly-discovered malware we call "Numero," all of which masquerade as legitimate AI tool installers. CyberLock ransomware, developed using PowerShell, primarily focuses on encrypting specific files on th...

Year in Review: AI based threats

2024 wasn't the year that AI rewrote the cybercrime playbook -- but it did turbocharge some of the old tricks. In Cisco Talos' 2024 Year in Review, with the help of our friends at Robust Intelligence now a Cisco company, we dissect how cybercriminals used generative AI to scale up social...

IR Trends Q1 2025: Phishing soars as identity-based attacks persist

Phishing attacks spiked this quarter as threat actors leveraged this method of initial access in half of all engagements, a vast increase from previous quarters. Conversely, the use of valid accounts for initial access was rarely seen this quarter, despite being the top observed method in 2024,...