Threat Source newsletter (March 24, 2022) — Of course the deepfake videos are here

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. The war in Ukraine has involved misinformation since before Russia’s ground forces invaded the country. So, it’s not really a shock that we’ve reached the stage of information warfare where deepfake... This is only th...

Threat Advisory: DoubleZero

Overview The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine released an advisory on March 22, 2022 disclosing another wiper dubbed "DoubleZero" targeting Ukrainian enterprises during Russia's invasion of the country. This wiper was detected as early as March 17, 2022. DoubleZero is yet another...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Heap overflow in Sound Exchange libsox library

Lilith of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an exploitable heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the sphere.c startread functionality of Sound Exchange libsox. The libsox library is a library of... This is only the beginning!...

On the Radar: Securing Web 3.0, the Metaverse and beyond

By Jaeson Schultz. Internet technology evolves rapidly, and the World Wide Web WWW or Web is currently experiencing a transition into what many are calling "Web 3.0". Web 3.0 is a nebulous term. If you spend enough time Googling it, you'll find many interpretations regarding what Web 3.0... This ...

Threat Roundup for March 11 to March 18

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between March 11 and March 18. 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... This is on...

Threat Source newsletter (March 17, 2022) — Channelling productive worry to help Ukraine

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. Cisco Talos continues to be heads-down working on the current Ukraine situation. This is incredibly difficult for everyone across the globe, especially for those directly affected. But that doesn’t mean those of... Th...

Threat Advisory: CaddyWiper

Overview Cybersecurity company ESET disclosed another Ukraine-focused wiper dubbed "CaddyWiper" on March 14. This wiper is relatively smaller than previous wiper attacks we've seen in Ukraine such as "HermeticWiper" and "WhisperGate," with a compiled size of just 9KB. The wiper discovered has...

From BlackMatter to BlackCat: Analyzing two attacks from one affiliate

By Tiago Pereira with contributions from Caitlin Huey. BlackCat is a recent and growing ransomware-as-a-service RaaS group that targeted several organizations worldwide over the past few months.There are rumors of a relationship between BlackCat and the BlackMatter/DarkSide ransomware groups,...

Preparing for denial-of-service attacks with Talos Incident Response

By Yuri Kramarz. Over the years, several extorsion-style and politically motivated denial-of-service attacks increased and still pose a threat to businesses and organizations of any size that can find themselves in the crosshairs of various malicious campaigns. A detailed... This is only the...

Beers with Talos, Ep. #118: Reflecting on the current situation in Ukraine

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 118 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify StitcherRecorded March 7, 2022. If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. This was... This is only the beginning! Please...

Threat Advisory: Opportunistic cyber criminals take advantage of Ukraine invasion

By Edmund Brumaghin, with contributions from Jonathan Byrne, Perceo Lemos and Vasileios Koutsoumpogeras. Executive Summary Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we have observed threat actors using email lures with themes related to the conflict, including humanitarian assistance and...

Threat advisory: Cybercriminals compromise users with malware disguised as pro-Ukraine cyber tools

Update March 12, 2022: Cisco Talos has updated the IOC section with additional hashes. Executive summary Opportunistic cybercriminals are attempting to exploit Ukrainian sympathizers by offering malware purporting to be offensive cyber tools to target Russian entities. Once downloaded, these...

Threat Roundup for March 4 to March 11

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between March 4 and March 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...

Talos Threat Source newsletter (March 10, 2022) — Fake social media posts spread in wake of Ukraine invasion

By Jon Munshaw. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter — complete with a new format and feel. First off, it goes without saying, but we’re all heartbroken by the crisis happening in Ukraine. Our hearts are with the people of Ukraine, our employees and their... This is only...

Iranian linked conglomerate MuddyWater comprised of regionally focused subgroups

By Asheer Malhotra, Vitor Ventura and Arnaud Zobec. Cisco Talos has observed new cyber attacks targeting Turkey and other Asian countries we believe with high confidence are from groups operating under the MuddyWater umbrella of APT groups. U.S. Cyber Command recently connected MuddyWater to...

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

By Jon Munshaw and Edmund Brumaghin. Microsoft released another relatively light security update Tuesday, disclosing 71 vulnerabilities, including fixes for issues in Azure and the Office suite of products. March’s Patch Tuesday only included two critical vulnerabilities, which is notable... This...

Deep dive: Vulnerabilities in ZTE router could lead to complete attacker control of the device

Cisco Talos’ vulnerability research team disclosed multiple vulnerabilities in the ZTE MF971R wireless hotspot and router in October. Several months removed from that disclosure and ZTE’s patch, we decided to take an even closer look at two of these vulnerabilities — CVE-2021-21748 and... This is...

Current executive guidance for ongoing cyberattacks in Ukraine

Read this blog post in 日本語 Japanese Cyber threat activity against Ukraine, and around the world, has long been a central focus of our work. We continue to monitor the Ukraine-Russia situation by enacting a comprehensive, Talos-wide effort to provide support to our partners and customers. These...

Threat Roundup for February 25 to March 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Feb. 25 and March 4. 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 Advisory: Cyclops Blink

Update Feb. 25, 2022In our ongoing research into activity surrounding Ukraine and in cooperation with Cisco Duo data scientists Talos discovered compromised MikroTik routers inside of Ukraine being leveraged to conduct brute force attacks on devices protected by multi-factor authentication. This...

Cisco stands on guard with our customers in Ukraine

As the Russia-led invasion intensifies, Ukraine is being attacked by bombs and bytes. Cisco is working around the clock on a global, company-wide effort to protect our customers there and ensure that nothing goes dark. Cisco Talos has taken the extraordinary step of directly operating security...

Talos on the developing situation in Ukraine

In the last month, Talos has seen a shift in activity in response to the unjust invasion of Ukraine. This post is meant to serve as our executive overview of the situation and provide you with the most up-to-date information and security content from Talos. As with any highly fluid or dynamic...

Crowd-sourced attacks present new risk of crisis escalation

By Matt Olney.An unpredictable and largely unknown set of actors present a threat to organizations, despite their sometimes unsophisticated techniques. Customers who are typically focused on top-tier, state-sponsored attacks should remain aware of these highly motivated threat actors, as... This ...

Threat Advisory: HermeticWiper

Update: March 1, 2022 Cisco Talos is aware of reporting related to additional components discovered to be associated with ongoing HermeticWiper attacks. These additional components include:HermeticWizard, which allows HermeticWiper to be propagated to and deployed on additional systems within...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in Lansweeper could lead to JavaScript, SQL injections

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the Lansweeper IT asset management solution that could allow an attacker to inject JavaScript or SQL code on the targeted... This is only the...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in Gerbv could lead to code execution, information disclosure

Claudio Bozzato of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the Gerbv file viewing software that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary remote code or disclose sensitive information. Gerbv is an... This is...

Threat Roundup for February 18 to February 25

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Feb. 18 and Feb. 25. 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...

Time to secure hybrid work for 2022, not 2002

By Nick Biasini, with contributions from Vitor Ventura. Editor’s note: This post is the first in a new series from Talos looking at high-level topics across the cybersecurity space. Our researchers rely on years of expertise, data, and tremendous visibility; applying what we can learn from...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Buffer overflow vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear could lead to code execution

Francesco Benvenuto and Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos and another team member discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit that... This is only...

Threat Roundup for February 11 to February 18

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Feb. 11 and Feb. 18. 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...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerability in Hancom Office could lead to memory corruption, code execution

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a vulnerability in Hancom Office — a popular software suite in South Korea — that could allow an attacker to corrupt memory on the targeted machine or execute remote... This...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerabilities in Moxa MXView could allow attacker to view sensitive information, bypass login

Patrick DeSantis of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in Moxa's MXview network management software that could allow an attacker to view sensitive data or bypass the need to log into the device. MXview... This is...

Threat Roundup for February 4 to February 11

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Feb. 4 and Feb. 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...

Beers with Talos, Ep. #116: Let's wade into the MuddyWater filled with Vipers

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 116 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify StitcherRecorded Feb. 4, 2022. If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Most people... This is only the beginning! Please...

What’s with the shared VBA code between Transparent Tribe and other threat actors?

By Vanja Svajcer and Vitor Ventura. Recently, we've been researching several threat actors operating in South Asia: Transparent Tribe, SideCopy, etc., that deploy a range of remote access trojans RATs. After a hunting session in our malware sample repositories and VirusTotal while looking into...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Feb. 2022 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw and Chris Neal. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 51 vulnerabilities across its large collection of hardware and software. None of the vulnerabilities disclosed this month are considered “critical,” an extreme rarity for the company’s... This is onl...

Iranian APT MuddyWater targets Turkish users via malicious PDFs, executables

By Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura. Cisco Talos has observed a new campaign targeting Turkish private organizations alongside governmental institutions. Talos attributes this campaign with high confidence to MuddyWater — an APT group recently attributed to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Sealevel SeaConnect

Francesco Benvenuto and Matt Wiseman of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered several vulnerabilities in Sealevel Systems Inc.’s SeaConnect internet-of-things edge device — many of which could allow an attacker to conduct a... This is...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Use-after-free in Google Chrome could lead to code execution

Marcin Towalski of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an exploitable use-after-free vulnerability in Google Chrome. Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser — and Chromium is the open-source version of the browser... This is only t...

Threat Roundup for January 28 to February 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Jan. 28 and Feb. 4. 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...

Arid Viper APT targets Palestine with new wave of politically themed phishing attacks, malware

By Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura. Cisco Talos has observed a new wave of Delphi malware called Micropsia developed and operated by the Arid Viper APT group since 2017.This campaign targets Palestinian entities and activists using politically themed lures.The latest iteration of the implant...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Memory corruption and use-after-free vulnerabilities in Foxit PDF Reader

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a memory corruption and use-after-free vulnerability in the Foxit PDF Reader. Foxit PDF Reader is one of the most popular PDF document readers currently... This is only the...

Threat Roundup for January 21 to January 28

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Jan. 21 and Jan. 28. 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 (Jan. 27, 2022)

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.Good afternoon, Talos readers. It's great to have New Year's resolutions and all. But we don't want you taking the wrong lessons away from 2021, either. Like just because Log4j happened doesn't mean you should stop logging or stop using open-source... This is on...

Beers with Talos, Ep. #115: Everybody's measured by quarters — even threat actors

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 115 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify StitcherRecorded Jan. 14, 2022. If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. We wanted... This is only the beginning! Please...

Vulnerability Spotlight: WiFi-connected security camera could be manipulated to spy on communications, among other malicious actions

Francesco Benvenuto of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered several vulnerabilities in the Reolink RLC-410W security camera that could allow an attacker to perform several malicious actions, including performing man-in-the-middle... Th...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Vulnerability in Apple iOS, iPad OS and MacOS could lead to disclosure of sensitive memory data

Jaewon Min of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered an out-of-bounds read vulnerability in Apple’s macOS and iOS operating systems that could lead to the disclosure of sensitive memory content. An attacker could capitalize on that... Th...

Ukraine Campaign Delivers Defacement and Wipers, in Continued Escalation

Authored by Nick Biasini, Michael Chen, Chris Neal, and Matt Olney with Contributions from Dmytro Korzhevin. Several cyber attacks against Ukrainian government websites — including website defacements and destructive wiper malware — have made headlines over the past few weeks as military... This ...

Talos Incident Response year-in-review for 2021

By David Liebenberg. Cisco Talos Incident Response CTIR, as with everyone else in the cybersecurity world, dealt with a bevy of threats last year, as responders dealt with an expanding set of ransomware adversaries and several major cybersecurity incidents affecting organizations worldwide,... Th...

Threat Roundup for January 14 to January 21

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