Threat Advisory: High Severity OpenSSL Vulnerabilities

In late October two new buffer overflow vulnerabilities, CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786, were announced in OpenSSL versions 3.0.0 to 3.0.6. These vulnerabilities can be exploited by sending an X.509 certificate with a specially crafted email address, potentially causing a buffer overflow resulti...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerabilities in Linux kernel, W1.fi

Mitchell Frank and Mark Leonard of Cisco discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two denial-of-service vulnerabilities in the open-source program W1.fi. Both of these vulnerabilities target hostapd. One could allow an attacker to forge authentication...

Akira ransomware continues to evolve

Akira continues to cement its position as one of the most prevalent ransomware operations in the threat landscape, according to Cisco Talos' findings and analysis. Their success is partly due to the fact that they are constantly evolving. For example, after Akira already developed a new version o...

Vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel could lead to arbitrary code execution

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team recently worked with Adobe and Microsoft to patch multiple vulnerabilities in the Acrobat and Excel software, respectively, that could lead to arbitrary code execution. Talos also disclosed six vulnerabilities in the Weston Embedded µC-HTTP HTTP server...

Threat Source newsletter (March 16, 2023) — A deep dive into Talos' work in Ukraine

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Were written a ton about Cisco Talos support of Ukraine and our friends and allies there. Now, we encourage you to watch and listen to the folks who have been working hands-on there. The latest episode of ThreatWise TV from Hazel Burt...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in D-LINK DIR-3040

Dave McDaniel discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the D-LINK DIR-3040 wireless router. The DIR-3040 is an AC3000-based wireless internet router. These vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to carry out a... This is...

Beers with Talos Ep. #65: Please welcome to the show… Talos Incident Response

By Mitch Neff. Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 65 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded Oct. 25, 2019 Today is a bit different. We normally keep things pretty neutral on this show not...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Google V8 Array.prototype memory corruption vulnerability

The V8 JavaScript engine in Google Chrome contains a memory corruption vulnerability that could allow an attacker to gain the ability to execute arbitrary code on the victim’s machine. V8 is the core JavaScript engine that runs in the Chrome browser. As part of Chrome and node.is, it is the most...

Vulnerability in Tencent WeChat custom browser could lead to remote code execution

Certain versions of WeChat, a popular messaging app created by tech giant Tencent, contain a type confusion vulnerability that could allow an adversary to execute remote code. While this issue, CVE-2023-3420, was disclosed and patched in the V8 engine in June 2023, the WeChat Webview component wa...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple issues in Robustel R1510 cellular router could lead to code execution, denial of service

Francesco Benvenuto of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered nine vulnerabilities in the Robustel R1510 industrial cellular router, several of which could allow an adversary to inject operating system code remotely. The Robustel R1510...

Threat Source newsletter (Feb. 4, 2021)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We are excited to finally share this LockBit research paper with you all after months of work. Some of our researchers spoke to a ransomware operator, which provided us insight into a threat actor’s day-to-day goals and tactics. T...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution, privilege escalation bugs in Microsoft Azure Sphere

Claudio Bozzato, Lilith and Dave McDaniel of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos researchers recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Azure Sphere, a cloud-connected and custom SoC platform designed specifically with IoT application...

Breaking down a two-year run of Vivin’s cryptominers

News Summary There is another large-scale cryptomining attack from an actor we are tracking as "Vivin" that has been active since at least November 2017. "Vivin" has consistently evolved over the past few years, despite having poor operational security and exposing key details of their campaign. ...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Bitdefender BOX 2 bootstrap remote code execution vulnerabilities

Claudio Bozzato, Lilith Wyatt and Dave McDaniel of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Bitdefender BOX 2 contains two remote code execution vulnerabilities in its bootstrap stage. The BOX 2 is a device that protects users’ home networks from a variety of threats...

Why metaphor may dictate your security strategy

Welcome to this week's edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Metaphor is a powerful tool for understanding emerging issues in cybersecurity. Framing the unfamiliar in terms of the well understood helps us remove the burden of extraneous detail to draw focus to the real issues. Recent reports o...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Hard-coded password vulnerability could allow attacker to completely take over Lenovo Smart Clock

Kelly Leuschner and Thorsten Rosendahl discovered this vulnerability. Cisco Talos researchers recently discovered a vulnerability in the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential that could allow an attacker to completely take over the device if they have access to the network the clock is connected to...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial of service in VMWare Workstation 15

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Executive summary VMware Workstation 15 contains an exploitable denial-of-service vulnerability. Workstation allows users to run multiple operating systems on a Linux or Windows PC. An attacker could trigger this particular vulnerability...

Cyber Security Week in Review (Feb. 22)

Welcome to this week's Cyber Security Week in Review, where Cisco Talos runs down all of the news we think you need to know in the security world. For more news delivered to your inbox every week, sign up for our Threat Source newsletter here. Top headlines this week U.S. officials charged a form...

GravityRAT - The Two-Year Evolution Of An APT Targeting India

This blog post is authored by Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres. Update: 4/30 Since the publication of the blog post, one of the anti-VM capability was commented a lot on Twitter: the detection of Virtual Machines by checking the temperature of the system. We decided to add more details and...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Hyland Perceptive Document Filters Multiple Vulnerabilites

Vulnerabilities discovered by Marcin 'Icewall' Noga from Talos Overview Talos has discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Hyland Perceptive Document Filters software. This software is a toolkit that allows developers to read and extract metadata from a file. It supports a large set of common file...

UAT-9244 targets South American telecommunication providers with three new malware implants

Cisco Talos is disclosing UAT-9244, who we assess with high confidence is a China-nexus advanced persistent threat APT actor closely associated with Famous Sparrow. Since 2024, UAT-9244 has targeted critical telecommunications infrastructure, including Windows and Linux-based endpoints and edge...

Three vulnerabilities in NVIDIA graphics driver could cause memory corruption

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered the vulnerabilities mentioned in this post. Cisco Talos recently disclosed three vulnerabilities in the shader functionality of the NVIDIA D3D10 driver that works with NVIDIAs graphics cards. The driver is vulnerable to memory corruption if an adversary sends...

Vulnerability Spotlight: OpenImageIO file processing issues could lead to arbitrary code execution, sensitive information leak and denial of service

Lilith of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered nineteen vulnerabilities in OpenImageIO, an image processing library, which could lead to sensitive information disclosure, denial of service and heap buffer overflows which could further lead to code executio...

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

Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 83 vulnerabilities across the companys hardware and software line, including seven critical issues in Windows point-to-point tunneling protocol. Octobers security update features 11 critical vulnerabilities, with the remainder bei...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in WWBN AVideo web app could lead to command injection, authentication bypass

Claudio Bozzato of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the WWBN AVideo web application that could allow an attacker to carry out a wide range of malicious actions, including command injection and...

Gamaredon - When nation states don’t pay all the bills

By Warren Mercer and Vitor Ventura. Update 02/22: The IOC section has been updated Gamaredon is a threat actor, active since at least 2013, that has long been associated with pro-Russian activities in several reports throughout the years. It is extremely aggressive and is usually not associated...

Threat Source newsletter (Dec. 19, 2019)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week. We have an early holiday present for you! This week, we introduced a new podcast to the Talos family. Talos Takes, a new short-form show...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Information leak vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat Reader

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an information leak vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by tricking the victim into opening a specially crafted, malicious PDF,...

Threat Source newsletter (June 6)

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. We hope to see everyone this weekend at the Talos Threat Research Summit in San Diego or throughout the week at Cisco Live. If you’...

Beers with Talos Ep. #53: Shiny happy election security (and ninjas)

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 53 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded May 10, 2019 — Election security has been a dominant headline for some time, so it’s high time we take a look at what th...

Submissions for talks at the 2019 Talos Threat Research Summit are now open

When Cisco Talos launched the first ever Talos Threat Research Summit last year, we never could have anticipated how popular it would be. Tickets sold out quickly, and our inaugural Talos-backed conference was packed in the days leading up to Cisco Live. This year, we are bringing back the Threat...

BruCON Primer: 10 Years and Cisco Talos Talks

Cisco Talos will have a significant presence at the 10th edition of BruCON, which kicks off this week. Below, you will find the presentations that Talos researchers will give, along with a brief overview of the topics they will discuss. We are fortunate to have multiple speakers presenting this...

New Research Paper: Prevalence and impact of low-entropy packing schemes in the malware ecosystem

Detection of malware is a constant battle between the technologies designed to detect and prevent malware and the authors creating them. One common technique adversaries leverage is packing binaries. Packing an executable is similar to applying compression or encryption and can inhibit the abilit...

Building a bypass with MSBuild

By Vanja Svajcer. NEWS SUMMARY Living-off-the-land binaries LoLBins continue to pose a risk to security defenders. We analyze the usage of the Microsoft Build Engine by attackers and red team personnel. These threats demonstrate techniques T1127 Trusted Developer Utilities and T1500 Compile After...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Another fix for Adobe Acrobat Reader DC text field value remote code execution

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Cisco Talos once again would like to bring attention to a remote code execution vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Acrobat, which is one of the most popular PDF readers on the market, contains a bug when the software incorrectly...

in(Secure) messaging apps — How side-channel attacks can compromise privacy in WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal

This blog post is authored by Vitor Ventura. Executive summary Messaging applications have been around since the inception of the internet. But recently, due to the increased awareness around mass surveillance in some countries, more users are installing end-to-end encrypted apps dubbed "secure...

Banking Trojan Attempts To Steal Brazillion$

This post was authored by Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres and Vanja SvajcerIntroductionBanking trojans are among some of the biggest threats to everyday users as they directly impact the user in terms of financial loss. Talos recently observed a new campaign specific to South America, namely...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Gdk-Pixbuf Vulnerabilities

OverviewToday, Talos is disclosing the discovery of two remote code execution vulnerabilities which have been identified in the Gdk-Pixbuf Toolkit. This toolkit used in multiple desktop applications including Chromium, Firefox, GNOME thumbnailer, VLC and others. Exploiting this vulnerability allo...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Dell Precision Optimizer and Invincea Vulnerabilities

Vulnerabilities discovered by Marcin ‘Icewall’ Noga of Cisco Talos.OverviewTalos are releasing advisories for vulnerabilities in the Dell Precision Optimizer application service software, Invincea-X and Invincea Dell Protected Workspace. These packages are pre-installed on certain Dell systems...

Uncovering Qilin attack methods exposed through multiple cases

In the second half of 2025, the ransomware group Qilin has continued to publish victim information on its leak site at a pace of more than 40 cases per month, making it one of the most impactful ransomware groups worldwide. The manufacturing sector has been the most affected, followed by...

IR Trends: Ransomware on the rise, while technology becomes most targeted sector

Business email compromise BEC and ransomware were the top threats observed by Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR in the second quarter of 2024, together accounting for 60 percent of engagements. Although there was a decrease in BEC engagements from last quarter, it was still a major threat fo...

Only one critical vulnerability included in May’s Microsoft Patch Tuesday; One other zero-day in DWN Core

After a relatively hefty Microsoft Patch Tuesday in April, this months security update from the company only included one critical vulnerability across its massive suite of products and services. In all, Mays slate of vulnerabilities disclosed by Microsoft included 59 total CVEs, most of which ar...

Vulnerabilities in employee management system could lead to remote code execution, login credential theft

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team has disclosed more than a dozen vulnerabilities over the past three weeks, five in a device that allows employees to check in and out of their shifts, and another that exists in an open-source library used in medical device imaging files. The Peplink Smart...

Quarterly Report: Incident Response Trends in Q3 2022

Ransomware and pre-ransomware engagements make up 40 percent of threats seen this quarter 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 quarter. It can b...

Beers with Talos Ep. #58: Defending Democracy and Doing DEFCON

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 58 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded July 19, 2019 — Wow, we packed a lot in this one: election security, burner phones, social apps' terms of servic...

Qakbot levels up with new obfuscation techniques

Ashlee Benge of Cisco Talos and Nick Randolph of the Threat Grid Research and Efficacy team authored this blog post. Executive summary Qakbot, also known as Qbot, is a well-documented banking trojan that has been around since 2008. Recent Qakbot campaigns, however, are utilizing an updated...

Threat Roundup for Feb. 8 to Feb. 15

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Feb. 08 and Feb. 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 Dec. 14 to Dec. 21

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Dec. 14 and Dec. 21. 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: Multiple Computerinsel PhotoLine PSD Code Execution Vulnerabilities

Discovered by Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos Overview Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing a vulnerability within Computerinsel PhotoLine's PSD-parsing functionality. Photoline is an image processing tool used to modify and edit images, as well as other graphic-related material. This product has a large...

Threat Round Up for Feb 16 - 23

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between February 16 and February 23. 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...