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...

Threat Source newsletter (Sept. 8, 2022) — Why there is no one-stop-shop solution for protecting passwords

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. It seems like there’s at least one major password breach every month — if not more. Most recently, there was an incident at Plex where all users had to reset their passwords. Many users pay for a password management...

Lazarus and the tale of three RATs

By Jung soo An, Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura. Cisco Talos has been tracking a new campaign operated by the Lazarus APT group, attributed to North Korea by the United States government. This campaign involved the exploitation of vulnerabilities in VMWare Horizon to gain an initial foothold in...

Talos EMEA Monthly Threat Update: How do you know if cyber insurance is right for you?

On September's edition of the Monthly EMEA Threat Update, Hazel Burton and Martin Lee break down cyber insurance. Although many businesses and organizations will think insurance will only help them in a worst-case scenario, that worst-case scenario comes for us all eventually. Martin and Hazel...

Multiple ransomware data leak sites experience DDoS attacks, facing intermittent outages and connectivity issues

By Azim Khodjibaev, Colin Grady, Paul Eubanks. Since Aug. 20, 2022, Cisco Talos has been monitoring suspected distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks resulting in intermittent downtime and outages affecting several ransomware-as-a-service RaaS data leak sites. While the source and origin of th...

MagicRAT: Lazarus’ latest gateway into victim networks

By Jung soo An, Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura. Cisco Talos has discovered a new remote access trojan RAT we're calling "MagicRAT," developed and operated by the Lazarus APT group, which the U.S. government believes is a North Korean state-sponsored actor. Lazarus deployed MagicRAT after the...

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 Roundup for August 26 to September 2

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 26 and Sept. 2. 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 Source newsletter (Sept. 1, 2022) — Conversations about an unborn baby's privacy

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. This week marks about 90 days before my wife’s due date with our first child, a baby girl. We’re both incredibly excited and nervous at the same time, and we have much to discuss, like how to lay out the nursery, what...

ModernLoader delivers multiple stealers, cryptominers and RATs

By Vanja Svajcer Cisco Talos recently observed three separate, but related, campaigns between March and June 2022 delivering a variety of threats, including the ModernLoader bot, RedLine information-stealer and cryptocurrency-mining malware to victims. The actors use PowerShell, .NET assemblies,...

Threat Roundup for August 19 to August 26

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 19 and Aug. 26. 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 Source newsletter (Aug. 25, 2022) — We're still not talking about Ukraine enough

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was once the most talked about story in the world. Six months into the conflict, modern attention spans have moved on to other news stories. But Ukraine Independence Day yesterday should...

Ukraine Independence Day: Talos update

On Independence Day for Ukraine, Aug. 24, 2022, Cisco Talos provided a live update on its continued support for the region. Six months since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Dmytro Korzhevin, a senior threat intelligence researcher, JJ Cummings, Talos' national intelligence principal, and Ashlee...

Threat Roundup for August 12 to August 19

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 12 and Aug. 19. 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 Source newsletter (Aug. 18, 2022) — Why aren't Lockdown modes the default setting on phones?

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. As the data privacy landscape gets increasingly murky, app developers and device manufacturers are finding new ways to sure up users’ personal information. Of course, all users have to do is go out of their way to...

Ukraine war spotlights agriculture sector's vulnerability to cyber attack

By Joe Marshall. The war in Ukraine has caused massive problems for global food supplies, underscoring the high impact of disruptive events to agriculture entities and related organizations. The challenges to the Ukrainian agriculture sector imposed by the war--and global ripple effects--have bee...

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...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Three vulnerabilities in HDF5 file format could lead to remote code execution

Dave McDaniel of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered three vulnerabilities in a library that works with the HDF5 file format that could allow an attacker to execute remote code on a targeted device. These issues arise in the libhdf5...

Threat Roundup for August 5 to August 12

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 5 and Aug. 12. 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 Source newsletter (Aug. 11, 2022) — All of the things-as-a-service

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Everyone seems to want to create the next “Netflix” of something. Xbox’s Game Pass is the “Netflix of video games.” Rent the Runway is a “Netflix of fashion” where customers subscribe to a rotation of fancy clothes. A...

Cisco Talos shares insights related to recent cyber attack on Cisco

Update History Date | Description of Updates ---|--- Aug. 10th 2022| Adding clarifying details on activity involving active directory. Aug. 10th 2022| Update made to the Cisco Response and Recommendations section related to MFA. Executive summary On May 24, 2022, Cisco became aware of a potential...

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

By Jon Munshaw and Vanja Svajcer. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing more than 120 vulnerabilities across its line of products and software, the most in a single Patch Tuesday in four months. This batch of updates also includes a fix for a new vulnerability in the...

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 Roundup for July 29 to August 5

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

New SDR feature released for Cisco Secure Email

Cisco Talos today announced the release of a new mechanism that allows Cisco Secure Email customers the option to submit Sender Domain Reputation SDR disputes through TalosIntelligence.com. Customers now have the option of receiving self-service support through TalosIntelligence.com or may contin...

Threat Source newsletter (Aug. 4, 2022) — BlackHat 2022 preview

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. After what seems like forever and honestly has been a really long time, we’re heading back to BlackHat in-person this year. We’re excited to see a lot of old friends again to commiserate, hang out, trade stories and...

Attackers leveraging Dark Utilities "C2aaS" platform in malware campaigns

By Edmund Brumaghin, Azim Khodjibaev and Matt Thaxton, with contributions from Arnaud Zobec. Executive Summary Dark Utilities, released in early 2022, is a platform that provides full-featured C2 capabilities to adversaries. It is marketed as a means to enable remote access, command execution,...

0xCC'd

We spend a lot of time preparing for Blackhat, and as part of putting together content for the show, one of our best, Lurene Grenier, submitted an unexpected piece of content: a poem. Now this poem isn't our regular security research or a shiny piece of corporate correspondence which we would nev...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in Alyac antivirus program could stop virus scanning, cause code execution

Jaewon Min of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Update Aug. 3, 2022: Talos disclosed two new vulnerabilities in the Alyac antivirus software and added their details to this post. Cisco Talos recently discovered out-of-bounds read and buffer overflow vulnerabilitie...

Manjusaka: A Chinese sibling of Sliver and Cobalt Strike

By Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura. Cisco Talos recently discovered a new attack framework called "Manjusaka" being used in the wild that has the potential to become prevalent across the threat landscape. This framework is advertised as an imitation of the Cobalt Strike framework. The implants...

Vulnerability Spotlight: How misusing properly serialized data opened TCL LinkHub Mesh Wi-Fi system to 17 vulnerabilities

By Carl Hurd. The TCL LinkHub Mesh Wi-Fi system is a multi-device Wi-Fi system that allows users to expand access to their network over a large physical area. What makes the LInkHub system unique is the lack of a network interface to manage the devices individually or in the mesh. Instead, a phon...

Researcher Spotlight: You should have been listening to Lurene Grenier years ago

The exploit researcher recently rejoined Talos after starting her career with the company’s predecessor By Jonathan Munshaw. Lurene Grenier says state-sponsored threat actors keep her up at night, even after years of studying and following them. She’s spent her security career warning people why...

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...

Threat Source newsletter (July 28, 2022) — What constitutes an "entry-level" job in cybersecurity?

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Between the White House’s recent meeting, countless conference talks and report after report warning of cybersecurity burnout, there’s been a ton of talk recently around the cybersecurity skills...

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:...

What Talos Incident Response learned from a recent Qakbot attack hijacking old email threads

By Nate Pors and Terryn Valikodath. Executive summary In a recent malspam campaign delivering the Qakbot banking trojan, Cisco Talos Incident Response CTIR observed the adversary using aggregated, old email threads from multiple organizations that we assess were likely harvested during the 2021...

Quarterly Report: Incident Response Trends in Q2 2022

Commodity malware usage surpasses ransomware by narrow margin By Caitlin Huey. For the first time in more than a year, ransomware was not the top threat Cisco Talos Incident Response CTIR responded to this quarter, as commodity malware surpassed ransomware by a narrow margin. This is likely due t...

Threat Roundup for July 15 to July 22

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 15 and July 22. 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 Source newsletter (July 21, 2022) — No topic is safe from being targeted by fake news and disinformation

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. I could spend time in this newsletter every week talking about fake news. There are always so many ridiculous memes, headlines, misleading stories, viral Facebook posts and manipulated media that I see come across my...

Attackers target Ukraine using GoMet backdoor

Executive summary Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Ukrainians have been under a nearly constant barrage of cyber attacks. Working jointly with Ukrainian organizations, Cisco Talos has discovered a fairly uncommon piece of malware targeting Ukraine — this time aimed at a large software...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Issue in Accusoft ImageGear could lead to memory corruption, code execution

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a use-after-free vulnerability in Accusoft ImageGear's PSD header processing function. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit that allows users to create,...

EMEAR Monthly Talos Update: Training the next generation of cybersecurity researchers

Cisco Talos and Cisco Secure have the latest edition of the Talos EMEAR Threat Update series out now, which you can watch above or over at this link, where Martin Lee and Hazel Burton talk about the cybersecurity skills gap that currently exists and how we can better train the next generation of...

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...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Use-after-free condition in Google Chrome WebGPU

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an exploitable use-after-free vulnerability in Google Chrome’s WebGPU standard. Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser — and Chromium is the open-source version of the browser tha...

Transparent Tribe begins targeting education sector in latest campaign

Cisco Talos has been tracking a new malicious campaign operated by the Transparent Tribe APT group. This campaign involves the targeting of educational institutions and students in the Indian subcontinent, a deviation from the adversary's typical focus on government entities. The attacks result i...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Adobe Acrobat DC use-after-free issues could lead to arbitrary code execution

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two use-after-free vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC that could allow an attacker to eventually gain the ability to execute arbitrary code. Acrobat is one of the most...

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

By Jon Munshaw and Tiago Pereira. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing more than 80 vulnerabilities in the company’s various software, hardware and firmware offerings, including one that’s actively being exploited in the wild. July's security update... This is only t...

Threat Roundup for July 1 to July 8

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between July 1 and July 8. 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 Source newsletter (July 7, 2022) — Teamwork makes the dream work

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the pros and cons of the way we publicize our threat research. I had a few conversations at Cisco Live with people — who are more generally IT-focused than... This is only the...

De-anonymizing ransomware domains on the dark web

By Paul Eubanks. We have developed three techniques to identify ransomware operators' dark websites hosted on public IP addresses, allowing us to uncover previously unknown infrastructure for the DarkAngels, Snatch, Quantum and Nokoyawa ransomware groups.The methods we used to identify the...