2022 Year in Review: APTs Livestream Replay

Did you miss our livestream focused on the APT section in the Cisco Talos Year in Review report? Join host Mitch Neff and special guests Jacob Finn, Asheer Malhotra, and Vitor Ventura as they discuss Talos findings and experiences tracking APTs in 2022. This livestream sheds light into the topic ...

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

Microsoft released its monthly security update on Tuesday, disclosing 98 vulnerabilities. Of these vulnerabilities, 11 are classified as "Critical", 87 are classified as "Important", no vulnerability classified as "Moderate." According to Microsoft all "Critical" vulnerability are either less...

Increasing trust, commitment, and predictability during a remote incident response

Authors: Gergana Karadzhova, Joe Schumacher, Pawel Bosek In this blog post, Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR presents some of the key benefits of remote IR support and offers a list of recommendations for working on a remote incident. Some organizations see added value in having incident...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Asus router access, information disclosure, denial of service vulnerabilities discovered

Lilith of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered three vulnerabilities in Asus router software. The Asus RT-AX82U router is one of the newer Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax-enabled routers that also supports mesh networking with other Asus routers. Like other routers, it i...

APT Topic Summary Report: Cisco Talos Year in Review 2022

State-sponsored or state-aligned advanced persistent threats APTs adapted to the changing geopolitical landscape in 2022. Cisco Talos observed several offensive cyber campaigns linked to several groups stemming from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, and countries in the Indian subcontinent. These...

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...

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...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Authentication bypass and enumeration vulnerabilities in Ghost CMS

Dave McDaniel and other members of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in Ghost CMS, one authentication bypass vulnerability and one enumeration vulnerability. Ghost is a content management system with tools to build a website, publish...

Threat Spotlight: XLLing in Excel - threat actors using malicious add-ins

Microsoft is phasing out support for executing VBA macros in downloaded Office documents. Cisco Talos investigates another vector for introduction of malicious code to Microsoft Excel--malicious add-ins, specifically XLL files. Although XLL files were supported since early versions of Excel,...

Threat Round up for December 9 to December 16

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

Talos Takes Ep. 122: Year in Review & Ukraine Activities

In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Kendall McKay to discuss the recently released year in review report and dig deep on our activities in Ukraine. The year in review covers a vast amount of data and intel sources to identify some of the key trends we observed in 2022. Our activities ...

Threat Source newsletter (Dec. 15, 2022): Talos Year in Review is here

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Its the most wonderful time of the year, and Im not talking about the holidays. The inaugural 2022 Talos Year in Review is here! And its taking over the final Threat Source newsletter of the year. Oh and did we mention were on Mastodo...

Ukraine Topic Summary Report: Cisco Talos Year in Review 2022

Talos ongoing support for Ukraine has been a large focus of our operational efforts this year. Driven by our core mission of protecting the Ukrainian people and infrastructure, Talos launched a task force of 40+ volunteers dedicated to defending our customers and partners within. This team of...

Beers with Talos Ep. 129: Talos Year in Review 2022 w/ Dave Liebenberg

‌ With this episode, we set out to discuss the premiere of the Talos Year in Review report - a look back at the major threats, trends, and topics from 2022 and what we should take forward into 2023. Dave Liebenberg runs the team behind this report and joins us to discuss why his team undertook th...

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...

HTML smugglers turn to SVG images

HTML smuggling is a technique attackers use to hide an encoded malicious script within an HTML email attachment or webpage. Once a victim receives the email and opens the attachment, their browser decodes and runs the script, which then assembles a malicious payload directly on the victims device...

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

Microsoft released its monthly security update on Tuesday, disclosing 48 vulnerabilities. Of these vulnerabilities, 6 are classified as "Critical", 41 are classified as "Important", with the remaining vulnerability classified as "Moderate." One of the critical vulnerabilities, which Microsoft...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerability discovered in VMWare vCenter

Marcin Icewall Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Cisco Talos recently discovered a denial-of-service vulnerability in VMWare vCenter Server. VMware vCenter Server is a platform that enables centralized control and monitoring over all virtual machines and EXSi hypervisors included...

Threat Round up for December 2 to December 9

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Dec. 2 and Dec. 9. 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,...

Threat Source newsletter (Dec. 8, 2022): Your uncle clicked every link

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. As we hurtle toward the end of another year I get that tightness in my chest - that feeling that I think most, if not all, Threat Source readers get at this time of year. Thats right, its once again the time of year when no matter wha...

Breaking the silence - Recent Truebot activity

Since August 2022, we have seen an increase in infections of Truebot aka Silence.Downloader malware. Truebot was first identified in 2017 and researchers have linked it to a threat actor called Silence Group that is responsible for several high-impact attacks on financial institutions in several...

2022 Year in Review Livestream

Did you miss our livestream focused on the Ukraine topics presented in the Cisco Talos Year in Review report? Join host Hazel Burton and special guests Kendall McKay, Nick Randolph, and Vanja Svajcer as they discuss Talos now-years-long critical infrastructure effort in Ukraine. Their breifing...

TEST-2022 Talos Year in Review Report-TEST

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Vulnerability Spotlight: Memory corruption vulnerability discovered in PowerISO

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Cisco Talos recently discovered a memory corruption vulnerability in PowerISO. TALOS-2022-1644 CVE-2022-41992 is a memory corruption vulnerability that exists in the VHD File Format parsing functionality of PowerISO 8.3. A specially crafte...

Vulnerability Spotlight: NVIDIA driver memory corruption vulnerabilities discovered

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered two memory corruption vulnerabilities in shader functionality of an NVIDIA driver. NVIDIA Graphics drivers are software for NVIDIA Graphics GPU installed on the PC. They are used to communicate between th...

Protecting major events: an incident response blueprint

The cyber security of major events, whether they are related to sports, professional conferences, expos or other events can be a time-consuming, complex undertaking. It necessitates a multifaceted approach and the involvement of multiple entities, including but not limited to the vendors,...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Lansweeper directory traversal and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities

Marcin Icewall Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered several directory traversal and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in Lansweeper. Lansweeper is an IT Asset Management solution that gathers hardware and software information of computers and...

Researcher Spotlight: How working for Talos started out as an ‘accident’ for Ashlee Benge before coming a second career

Talos lead of data strategy and insights has a lot of weight on her shoulders currently, but its nothing shes not used to Most people who first meet Ashlee Benge do a double take when they hear about her past experience. The average security practitioner at a networking event may share that they...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Callback Technologies CBFS Filter denial-of-service vulnerabilities

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered three denial-of-service vulnerabilities in Callback Technologies CBFS Filter. Callback Technologies has a CBFS file storage solution for use in customizing data persistence on devices. To accompany...

Threat Round up for November 11 to 18

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Nov. 11 and Nov. 18. 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,...

Threat Source newsletter (Nov. 17, 2022): Hot off the press! The Snort 2023 Calendar is here

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Its everyones favorite time of year again and no, I dont mean the impending holidays. The Snort 2023 calendar is finally here, and yall, its a good one. Packed full of classic memes and punny Snorties, the calendar is sure to delight...

Get a Loda This: LodaRAT meets new friends

LodaRAT samples were deployed alongside other malware families, including RedLine and Neshta. Cisco Talos identified several variants and altered versions of LodaRAT with updated functionality have been seen in the wild. Changes in these LodaRAT variants include new functionality allowing...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Microsoft Office class attribute double-free vulnerability

Marcin Icewall Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered a class attribute double-free vulnerability in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is a suite of tools used for productivity in both a corporate environment as well as by end-users. It offers a ran...

Threat Source newsletter (Nov. 10, 2022): Vulnerability research, movies in class, and Emotet once again

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Tuesday was an absolute hammer for the infosec community. Not only did we have the US elections but we had Emotet returning and a regular Microsoft Tuesday release. That release always leads me to think about the bug hunting ecosystem...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Use-after-free vulnerabilities in Foxit Reader could lead to arbitrary code execution

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered several use-after-free vulnerabilities in Foxit Reader that could lead to arbitrary code execution. The Foxit Reader is one of the most popular PDF document readers, which aims to have feature pari...

Threat Spotlight: Cyber Criminal Adoption of IPFS for Phishing, Malware Campaigns

The InterPlanetary File System IPFS is an emerging Web3 technology that is currently seeing widespread abuse by threat actors. Cisco Talos has observed multiple ongoing campaigns that leverage the IPFS network to host their malware payloads and phishing kit infrastructure while facilitating other...

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

Microsoft released its monthly security update on Tuesday, disclosing 62 vulnerabilities. Of these vulnerabilities, 8 are classified as "Critical" and the rest are classified as "Important." Three of the critical entries are remote code execution RCE vulnerabilities for Windows Point-to-Point...

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...

The Company You Keep – Preparing for supply chain attacks with Talos IR

Given the increasing frequency of supply chain attacks, the sophistication of those attacks, and the expansion of the attack surface beyond an organizations direct control, incident preparedness and response activities must be considered in the overall supply chain risk mitigation strategy. Suppl...

Threat Roundup for October 28 to November 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Oct. 28 and Nov. 4. 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,...

Threat Source newsletter (Nov. 3, 2022): Mastodon, evolution, and LiveJournal oh my!

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Im fascinated by how things live and die on the internet. Things that are ubiquitous to our daily lives are simply gone the next. LiveJournal and Myspace we hardly knew you. Elon Musks purchase of Twitter and the subsequent exodus led...

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...

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 Roundup for October 21 to October 28

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats weve observed between Oct. 21 and Oct. 28. 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,...

See Yourself in Cyber: A Cybersecurity Awareness Month recap

As yet another October comes to an end, so does another Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Since 2004 when the President of the United States and Congress declared October Cybersecurity Awareness Month, weve taken the time to share our cybersecurity knowledge with the broader general public year afte...

Threat Source newsletter (Oct. 27, 2022): I thought we were already aware of supply chain attacks?

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Threat Source newsletter. There are plenty of jokes about whether were "aware" of cybersecurity during National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. But now Im wondering if people are aware of supply chain attacks. I thought we hit the pinnacle of supply chain attac...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in InHand router could give attackers access to console, delete files

Francesco Benvenuto of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered several vulnerabilities in InHand Networks InRouter302 that could allow an attacker to access the routers console and make changes to the routers settings, including security protocols. The InRout...

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...

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 Roundup for October 14 to October 21

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Oct. 14 and Oct. 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...