Talos Takes Ep. #73 (NCSAM edition): Fight the phish from land, sea and air

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. Most people may think of spam as being the classic email promising that you've won the lottery or some great prize,... Thi...

Talos Takes Ep. #68: The various pivots and pitfalls in a malware investigation

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. On this week's episode, Vitor Ventura from our research team walks through his recent work on connecting several... This i...

Threat Source newsletter (Sept. 2, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. If you haven't seen already, our blog has a lot of cool and new stuff this week. We first dove into the world of proxyware on Tuesday aka internet-sharing applications. Attackers are hiding in this newly popular... This is only the...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear that an adversary could exploit to corrupt memory on the targeted machine. The ImageGear library is a... This i...

Talos Takes Ep. #37: What's with all this talk about supply chain attacks?

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. The major SolarWinds campaign has been generating headlines for weeks now. And while its specific targets make this attack unique, this is...

Threat Source newsletter (Jan. 21, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We know it’s hard to focus on anything happening outside of Washington, D.C. this week. But we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the exciting news that the Snort 3 GA is officially out now! This update has been literally years ...

Threat Roundup for September 4 to September 11

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 4 and Sept. 11. 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 Source newsletter for Sept. 10, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. In our continued research on election security, we have a new video roundtable discussion up on our YouTube page. In this Q&A-style format, I ask our researchers questions about the work they’ve done researching disinformation aka...

Threat Roundup for August 21 to August 27

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 21 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 characteristics...

What to expect when you're electing: The building blocks of disinformation campaigns

By Nick Biasini, Kendall McKay and Matt Valites. As Cisco Talos discovered during our four-year investigation into election security, securing elections is an extremely difficult, complex task. In the first paper in our election series, “What to expect when you’re electing,” Talos outlined how th...

Threat Roundup for July 17 to July 24

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 17 and July 24. 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 July 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 only a few vulnerabilities are considered critical, users of all Microsoft and Windows products are urged to update their software as soon as possib...

Beers with Talos Ep. #86: It’s just an exploit popularity contest...

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 85 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 June 5, 2020 Prod. Note: The team decided to hold ba...

Beers with Talos EP 32 - Live from Orlando Part 2: Take All the Things Off the Internet

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Episode 32 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. 32 show notes: Recorded June 13, 2018 — Still live in Orlando, just this time from the lovely lobb...

Threat Round Up for April 27 to May 04

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between April 27 and May 4. As with previous roundups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. We'll summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of...

JavaScript obfuscation: From party trick to phishing kit

We open a JavaScript artifact hoping for code, and instead get string arrays, strangely named functions, encoded URLs, runtime decoders, and eval statements. That is the point where "reading the script" stops being enough. Obfuscated JavaScript is still code, but it is code with the useful contex...

[Video] Where protection starts: Cisco Talos Intelligence Integrations

!\Video\ Where protection starts: Cisco Talos Intelligence Integrationshttps://storage.ghost.io/c/af/a0/afa04ee3-414f-4481-8d23-7e7c146f192e/content/images/2026/07/Talosintegrationsheader-2.jpg Cybersecurity has always involved elements of uncertainty. Every day, security teams are asked to make...

It pays to be a forever student

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. If I haven't said it in a newsletter before, I'll say it now: If you want to be good at cybersecurity, be a forever student. Cultivating and feeding your desire to know how things work is one of the key ingredients to being a hacker...

Inside the Talos 2025 Year in Review: A discussion on what the data means for defenders

Every year, the Cisco Talos Year in Review captures the patterns shaping the threat landscape. The 2025 report paints a clear picture: Attackers are moving faster than ever, while using identity-related attacks as the primary battleground. To unpack the biggest takeaways and what they mean for...

Foxit, Epic Games Store, MedDreams vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery & Research team recently disclosed three vulnerabilities in Foxit PDF Editor, one in the Epic Games Store, and twenty-one in MedDream PACS. The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective vendors, all in adherence to Cisco...

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

Microsoft has released its monthly security update for January 2026, which includes 112 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 8 that Microsoft marked as "critical". In this month's release, Microsoft observed one of the included "important" vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-20805, as...

What happens when you engage Cisco Talos Incident Response?

In today's world, cybersecurity incidents are not a matter of if, but when and how. From ransomware attacks to data breaches exposing sensitive information, organizations face a changing threat landscape. As a result of cybersecurity attacks, organizations can experience downtime, financial losse...

Libbiosig, Tenda, SAIL, PDF XChange, Foxit vulnerabilities

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery & Research team recently disclosed ten vulnerabilities in BioSig Libbiosig, nine in Tenda AC6 Router, eight in SAIL, two in PDF-XChange Editor, and one in a Foxit PDF Reader. The vulnerabilities mentioned in this blog post have been patched by their respective...

Russian state-sponsored espionage group Static Tundra compromises unpatched end-of-life network devices

Static Tundra is a Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage group linked to the FSB's Center 16 unit that has been operating for over a decade, specializing in compromising network devices for long-term intelligence gathering operations. The group actively exploits a seven-year-old vulnerability...

Know thyself, know thy environment

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. This week, I'm coming to you from Cisco Live in San Diego where I've just talked to a room that some of you may have been in, so writing this feels a bit surreal. It's really hard to try and write a cogent newsletter with all that's...

Threat actor abuses Gophish to deliver new PowerRAT and DCRAT

Cisco Talos recently discovered a phishing campaign using an open-source phishing toolkit called Gophish by an unknown threat actor. The campaign involves modular infection chains that are either Maldoc or HTML-based infections and require the victim's intervention to trigger the infection chain...

UAT-5647 targets Ukrainian and Polish entities with RomCom malware variants

Cisco Talos has observed a new wave of attacks active since at least late 2023, from a Russian speaking group we track as "UAT-5647", against Ukrainian government entities and unknown Polish entities. UAT-5647 is also known as RomCom and is widely attributed to Russian speaking threat actors in...

The vulnerabilities we uncovered by fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks

Hunting for vulnerabilities in industrial environments has become increasingly important as industrial control systems and critical infrastructure face threats from state-sponsored actors and ransomware groups hoping to cash out on million-dollar payments. Fuzzing has long been one of our favorit...

Fuzzing µCOS protocol stacks, Part 2: Handling multiple requests per test case

So far in this series, Ive developed a fuzzer for the µC/HTTP-server. As described in the previous post, this fuzzer reads from a file to enable compatibility with AFL++. That implementation only fuzzes a single request at a time. Although that single request fuzzer uncovered a few security...

Detecting evolving threats: NetSupport RAT campaign

Cisco Talos is actively tracking multiple malware campaigns that utilize NetSupport RAT for persistent infections. These campaigns evade detection through obfuscation and updates. Snort can provide a strong defense before this malware reaches endpoints. In this first Deep Dive with NTDR, we explo...

How Talos IR’s Purple Team can help you prepare for the worst-case scenario

Purple Team exercises are included within the Cisco Talos Incident Response Retainer service and our experts can help your organization find security holes before the bad guys can. As your trusted advisor, our purple team, which is a combination of both red and blue teams, emulates one joint atta...

Threat Roundup for June 9 to June 16

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between June 9 and June 16. 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,...

How threat actors are using AI and other modern tools to enhance their phishing attempts

Phishing attacks are increasingly more targeted and customized than in the past. The proliferation of additional communications channels such as mobile devices and social media provides attackers with new avenues to phish users. The technology behind phishing attacks evolves as necessary for...

February 24th

Today marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. While there is much we could say, we will simply reiterate our unwavering support of our colleagues, partners, and the people of Ukraine as they defend their country and our hope that peace and comfort come quickly to them. Everything we said one...

Threat Source newsletter (Jan. 5, 2023): Digging out of our inboxes

Happy New Year and welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. We cant tell if its the fog from Lurenes deadly eggnog or dare we say pure rest and relaxation but were still digging out of our inboxes, trying to remember logins, and circle back on all the things we prolonged int...

Researcher Spotlight: How Azim Khodjibaev went from hunting real-world threats to threats on the dark web

A case study in why cybersecurity experience is not a prerequisite to work in security Azim Khodjibaev knows all sides of the "security" industry. That doesnt just cover cybersecurity, either -- he spent the first part of his career ensuring the physical safety of civilians and military personnel...

Threat Source newsletter (Oct. 20, 2022) — Shields Up! No seriously, Shields Waaaaay Up

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Im very excited about this video -- its a project Ive been working on with my team for a while now. Building off what Ive written about in the past regarding fake news, this video examines what essentially equates to t...

Developer account body snatchers pose risks to the software supply chain

By Jaeson Schultz. Over the past several years, high-profile software supply chain attacks have increased in frequency. These attacks can be difficult to detect and source code repositories became a key focus of this research. Developer account takeovers present a substantial risk to the software...

Researcher Spotlight: Globetrotting with Yuri Kramarz

From the World Cup in Qatar to robotics manufacturing in east Asia, this incident responder combines experience from multiple arenas Yuri "Jerzy" Kramarz helped secure everything from the businesses supporting the upcoming World Cup in Qatar to the Black Hat security conference and critical...

Researcher Spotlight: How Asheer Malhotra looks for ‘instant gratification’ in threat hunting

The India native has transitioned from a reverse-engineer hobbyist to a public speaker in just a few years By Jon Munshaw. Ninety percent of Asheer Malhotra’s work will never see the light of day. But it’s that 10 percent that keeps him motivated to keep looking for something new. The Talos...

Threat Source newsletter (June 30, 2022) — AI voice cloning is somehow more scary than deepfake videos

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. We took a week off for summer vacation but are back in the thick of security things now. My first exposure to deepfake videos was when Jordan Peele worked with BuzzFeed News to produce this video of... This is only th...

Threat Roundup for June 10 to June 17

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between June 10 and June 17. 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 Roundup for May 27 to June 3

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between May 27 and June 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 characteristics,...

The BlackByte ransomware group is striking users all over the globe

News summary Cisco Talos has been monitoring the BlackByte Ransomware Group for several months, infecting victims all over the world, from North America to Colombia, Netherlands, China, Mexico and Vietnam.The FBI released a joint cybersecurity advisory in February 2022 warning about this group,...

Threat Source newsletter (May 19, 2022) — Why I'm missing the days of iPods and LimeWire

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. I will openly admit that I still own a “classic” iPod — the giant brick that weighed down my skinny jeans in high school and did nothing except play music. There are dozens of hours of music on there that I... This is...

Ransomware: How executives should prepare given the current threat landscape

By Nate Pors. Top executives are increasingly dreading the phone call from their fellow employees notifying them that their company has been hit by a cyber attack. Nearly every week in 2021 and early 2022, a prominent organization has been in the media spotlight as their public relations team...

Threat Source newsletter (May 12, 2022) — Mandatory MFA adoption is great, but is it too late?

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Mandatory multi-factor authentication is all the rage nowadays. GitHub just announced that all contributors would have to enroll in MFA by 2023 to log into their accounts. And Google announced as part of... This is on...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Two vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear could lead to DoS, arbitrary free

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two new vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit that allows users to create, edit, annotate and convert... This is on...

Threat Roundup for April 8 to April 15

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

Threat Source newsletter (April 7, 2022) — More money for cybersecurity still doesn't solve the skills gap problem

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. U.S. President Joe Biden’s proposed budget would include an 11 percent increase in the federal government’s IT budget, including a total of $10.9 billion for cybersecurity. On the surface — this is all... This is only...