Beers with Talos Ep. #59: The tardy episode

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 59 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded 8/2/19 - Yes, I know what today’s date is. We got really busy last week and I am sorry that the podcast is late...

PyREBox, a Python Scriptable Reverse Engineering Sandbox

This post was authored by Xabier Ugarte PedreroIn Talos, we are continuously trying to improve our research and threat intelligence capabilities. As a consequence, we not only leverage standard tools for analysis, but we also focus our efforts on innovation, developing our own technology to...

Samba Vulnerability: Dancing Its Way to a Network Near You

OverviewToday, a new vulnerability affecting the widely used Samba software was released. Samba is the SMB/CIFS protocol commonly used in NIX operating systems. CVE-2017-7494 has the potential to impact many systems around the world. This vulnerability could allow a user to upload a shared librar...

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

Microsoft has released its monthly security update for July 2025, which includes 132 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 14 that Microsoft marked as "critical." In this month's release, Microsoft observed none of the included vulnerabilities being actively exploited in the...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for April 2023 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

Microsoft released its monthly round of security updates and patches today, continuing its trend of fixing zero-day vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday. Aprils security update includes one vulnerability thats actively being exploited in the wild. There are also eight critical vulnerabilities and the...

Threat Roundup for July 22 - 29

Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed from July 22 - 29. 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, indicators of...

Vulnerability Spotlight: How a code re-use issue led to vulnerabilities across multiple products

By Francesco Benvenuto. Recently, I was performing some research on a wireless router and noticed the following piece of code:...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Media Foundation

Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Microsoft Media Foundation’s framework contains a remote code execution vulnerability that exists due to a use-after-free condition. This specific bug lies in Media Foundation's MPEG4 DLL. An attacker could provide a...

All the places you can see and hear Talos at Black Hat 2019

It is once again time for Security Summer Camp – the annual week when security experts descend upon Las Vegas for Black Hat and DEFCON. Talos will be around all week, but we want to start off with a Black Hat preview — the Defcon one will be here later today. Throughout the conference, Talos...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution vulnerabilities in Simple DirectMedia Layer

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Simple DirectMedia Layer contains two vulnerabilities that could an attacker to remotely execute code on the victim’s machine. Both bugs are present in the SDL2image library, which is used for loading images in different...

Microsoft WindowsCodecs.dll SniffAndConvertToWideString Information Leak Vulnerability

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos. Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing a vulnerability in the WindowsCodecs.dll component of the Windows operating system. WindowsCodecs.dll is a component library that exists in the implementation of Windows Imaging Component WIC,...

ArcaneDoor - New espionage-focused campaign found targeting perimeter network devices

Updated 2024-04-25 16:57 GMT with minor wording corrections regarding the targeting of other vendors. ArcaneDoor is a campaign that is the latest example of state-sponsored actors targeting perimeter network devices from multiple vendors. Coveted by these actors, perimeter network devices are the...

Vulnerability spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Schneider Electric Modicon M580

Jared Rittle and Patrick DeSantis of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. There are several vulnerabilities in the Schneider Electric Modicon M580 that could lead to a variety of conditions, the majority of which can cause a denial of service. The Modicon M580 is the...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat Reader

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary There are two remote code execution vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat Reader that could occur if a user were to open a malicious PDF on their machine using the software. Acrobat is the most widely used PDF reader...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in coTURN

Nicolas Edet of Cisco discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing three vulnerabilities in coTURN. coTURN is an open-source implementation of TURN and STUN servers that can be used as a general-purpose networking traffic TURN server. TURN servers are usual...

Beers with Talos Ep. #56 - Flatlined: Breach to Bankrupt

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 56 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded 6/24/19 - Back in the studio for EP 56 and off the top, Matt got some new audio toy for his side hustle as a Twitch star...

Sextortion profits decline despite higher volume, new techniques

Post authored by Nick Biasini and Jaeson Schultz. Sextortion spammers continue blasting away at high volume. The success they experienced with several high-profile campaigns last year has led these attackers to continue transmitting massive amounts of sextortion email. These sextortion spammers...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Adobe Reader DC Parser Confusion

Parser vulnerabilities in common software packages such as Adobe Acrobat Reader pose a significant security risk to large portions of the internet. The fact that these software packages typically have a large footprints often gives attackers a broad attack surface they can potentially leverage fo...

Talos IR trends: BEC attacks surge, while weaknesses in MFA persist

Business email compromise BEC was the top threat observed by Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR in the first quarter of 2024, accounting for nearly half of engagements, which is more than double what was observed in the previous quarter. The most observed means of gaining initial access was t...

Microsoft patches 12 critical vulnerabilities, nine of which are in Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol

Microsoft disclosed 104 vulnerabilities in its extensive range of software and services, the most in a single Patch Tuesday since July. What is most notable is that this batch of vulnerabilities includes 12 that are considered "critical," nine of which are remote code execution vulnerabilities in...

Threat Source newsletter (June 27, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jonathan Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. You never want to fall behind on Beers with Talos. So make sure to listen to the latest episode on your commute home today. This...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Shimo VPN's helper tool

Discovered by Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos. Overview Cisco Talos is disclosing a series of vulnerabilities found in the Shimo VPN Helper Tool. Shimo VPN is a popular VPN client for MacOS that can be used to connect multiple VPN accounts to one application. These specific vulnerabilities were found ...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple local vulnerabilities in Pixar Renderman

Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary The MacOS version of Pixar Renderman contains three local vulnerabilities in its install helper tool. An attacker could exploit these bugs to escalate their privileges to root. Renderman is a rendering application used...

How CVSS 4.0 changes (or doesn’t) the way we see vulnerability severity

Finding, managing and patching security vulnerabilities on any network, no matter the size, is a tall task. In the first week of 2024 alone, there were 621 new common IT security vulnerabilities and exposures CVEs disclosed worldwide, covering a range of applications, software and hardware that...

Threat Source newsletter (July 15, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. The value of cryptocurrency is all over the place. Elon Musk's tweets can send Dogecoin rising and falling. And Monero, the most popular currency for cryptominers, has gone all over the place this year. So does that have... This is...

Incident Response lessons from recent Maze ransomware attacks

By JJ Cummings and Dave Liebenberg This year, we have been flooded with reports of targeted ransomware attacks. Whether it's a city, hospital, large- or medium-sized enterprise — they are all being targeted. These attacks can result in significant damage, cost, and have many different initial...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Two vulnerabilities in RDP for Windows 7, XP

A Cisco Talos researcher discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two issues in two implementations of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services: a denial-of-service vulnerability that affects Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 when RDP 8.0 is enabled, Windows 8/Serv...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Live Networks LIVE555 streaming media RTSPServer code execution vulnerability

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Lilith Wyatt of Cisco Talos. Cisco Talos is disclosing a code execution vulnerability that has been identified in Live Networks LIVE555 streaming media RTSPServer. LIVE555 Streaming Media is a set of open-source C++ libraries developed by Live Networks Inc...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for February 2023 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

Microsoft released its monthly security update on Tuesday, disclosing 73 vulnerabilities. Of these vulnerabilities, 8 are classified as "Critical", 64 are classified as "Important", one vulnerability is classified as "Moderate." According to Microsoft none of the vulnerabilities has been publicly...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Apple Safari SVG marker element baseVal remote code execution vulnerability

Marcin Towalski of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Apple’s Safari web browser is open to a remote code execution vulnerability via its SVG marker element feature inside the Safari WebKit. Safari uses the WebCore DOM rendering system in WebKit. Rendering engine allo...

Emotet re-emerges after the holidays

While Emotet has been around for many years and is one of the most well-known pieces of malware in the wild, that doesn't mean attackers don't try to freshen it up. Cisco Talos recently discovered several new campaigns distributing the infamous banking trojan via email. These new campaigns have...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Issues in Foxit PDF Reader

Overview Talos is disclosing five vulnerabilities in Foxit PDF Reader. Foxit PDF Reader is a popular free program for viewing, creating, and editing PDF documents. It is commonly used as an alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader and has a widely used browser plugin available. Update to the current...

ROKRAT Reloaded

This post was authored by Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres and with contributions from Jungsoo An.Executive SummaryEarlier this year, Talos published 2 articles concerning South Korean threats. The first one was about the use of a malicious HWP document which dropped downloaders used to retrieve...

Spoofed SEC Emails Distribute Evolved DNSMessenger

This post was authored by Edmund Brumaghin, Colin Grady, with contributions from Dave Maynor and @Simpo13.Executive SummaryCisco Talos previously published research into a targeted attack that leveraged an interesting infection process using DNS TXT records to create a bidirectional command and...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in some AMD graphics cards

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Multiple vulnerabilities exist in a driver associated with the AMD Radeon line of graphics cards. An attacker can exploit these bugs by providing a specially crafted shader file to the user while using VMware...

How adversaries use politics for compromise

By Nick Biasini and Edmund Brumaghin. Executive Summary With the U.S. presidential primaries just around the corner, even malware authors can't help but get behind the frenzy. Cisco Talos recently discovered several malware distribution campaigns where the adversaries were utilizing the names and...

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

By Jon Munshaw and Asheer Malhotra. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 64 vulnerabilities across the company’s hardware and software line, a sharp decline from the record number of issues Microsoft disclosed last month. September's security update features five...

PoetRAT: Python RAT uses COVID-19 lures to target Azerbaijan public and private sectors

By Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura. News summaryAzerbaijan government and energy sector likely targeted by an unknown actor.From the energy sector, the actor demonstrates interest in SCADA systems related to wind turbines.The actor uses Word documents to drop malware that allows...

Cisco Talos helps CISOs get back to basics with advisory series

At Cisco Talos, we try to build detections for every threat we see to provide customers with a portfolio capable of identifying and stopping threats at various stages of an attack's lifecycle. Deploying the best suite of layered security tools is an integral part of protecting an organization. Bu...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Information disclosure vulnerability in Blynk-Library

Lilith Wyatt of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Cisco Talos recently discovered an information disclosure vulnerability in Blynk-Library. Blynk-Library is a small library for connecting more than 400 different embedded device models into a private or enterprise Blynk-Server instance...

Now’s not the time to take our foot off the gas when it comes to fighting disinformation online

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. In the wake of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, it seemed like big tech companies were taking the fight against disinformation seriously. Social media outlets set up new fact-checking procedures and got more aggressive about...

New partnership brings together Talos’ visibility with IR’s unmatched response capabilities

By Jon Munshaw. The threat landscape has evolved into a complex, challenging environment for organizations everywhere. A talent shortage, combined with an increase in incidents, has led to a generally weak security posture among most organizations. Defenders’ backs are up against the wall...

Talos discovers Microsoft kernel mode driver vulnerabilities that could lead to SYSTEM privileges; Seven other critical issues disclosed

Microsoft disclosed six security vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited across its products as part of the companys regular Patch Tuesday security update. In all, Augusts monthly round of patches from Microsoft included 87 vulnerabilities, seven of which are considered critical. In...

Quarterly Report: Incident Response Trends in Q3 2022

Ransomware and pre-ransomware engagements make up 40 percent of threats seen this quarter By Caitlin Huey. For the first time since compiling these reports, Cisco Talos Incident Response saw an equal number of ransomware and pre-ransomware engagements, making up nearly 40 percent of threats this...

Threat Source newsletter (Nov. 19, 2020)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. In case you hadn’t already realized, Snort somehow became a meme this week, so that was fun. As 2020 finally...or already...I can’t decide which comes to an end, we’re going to start doing a look back at the year that was in...

Gustuff return, new features for victims

By Vitor Ventura with contributions from Chris Neal. Executive summary The Gustuff banking trojan is back with new features, months after initially appearing targeting financial institutions in Australia. Cisco Talos first reported on Gustuff in April. Soon after, the actors behind Gustuff starte...

Beers with Talos Ep. #55: Live from San Diego!

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 55 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded June 12, 2019 — God knows why, but we bring you another live episode from the Talos Threat Research Summit at Cisco Live...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Wacom Update Helper

Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary There are two privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Wacom update helper. The update helper is a utility installed alongside the macOS application for Wacom tablets. The application interacts with the tablet and...

Cisco Talos' new reputation dispute system

We know users have been waiting for this feature for a while, and we are here to say: It’s ready. Cisco Talos’ new reputation system rolled out Jan. 14 on TalosIntelligence.com. We have been working on this change since the rollout was initially announced this past summer. Starting today, all use...

IR Trends Q2 2026: Phishing and weaponized remote management tools drive attack chains

Phishing was the primary means of gaining initial access this quarter, appearing in over half of all Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR engagements - an increase from approximately a third of engagements last quarter. Attackers continued to innovate their delivery methods to evade defenses,...