Threat Source newsletter for Oct. 8, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We’ve been writing and talking about election security a ton lately. And as the U.S. presidential election draws closer, we decided it was time to summarize some things. So, we released this blog post with our formal recommendatio...

Vulnerability Spotlight: DoS vulnerability in ATIKMDAG.SYS AMD graphics driver

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw.Cisco Talos recently discovered a denial-of-service vulnerability in the ATIKMDAG.SYS driver for some AMD graphics cards. An attacker could send the victim a specially crafted D3DKMTCreateAllocation API request to cause...

What to expect when you’re electing: Voter recommendations

By Amy Henderson. Information operations have been around for millennia, yet with the advent of the internet and the democratization of content creation, the barriers to entry have lowered to a point that anyone can play now. In the course of our latest research on disinformation, with an eye...

PoetRAT: Malware targeting public and private sector in Azerbaijan evolves

By Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura. The Azerbaijan public sector and other important organizations are still targeted by new versions of PoetRAT.This actor leverages malicious Microsoft Word documents alleged to be from the Azerbaijan government.The attacker has moved from Pytho...

90 days, 16 bugs, and an Azure Sphere Challenge

Cisco Talos reports 16 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure Sphere's sponsored research challenge. By Claudio Bozzato, Lilith --; and Dave McDaniel. On May 15, 2020, Microsoft kicked off the Azure Sphere Security Research Challenge, a three-month initiative aimed at finding bugs in Azure Sphere...

What to expect when you're electing: Information hygiene and the human levers of disinformation

Editor's note: Related reading on Talos election security research: https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2020/07/what-to-expect-when-youre-electing.html https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2020/09/election-roundtable-video.html...

Threat Roundup for September 25 to October 2

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

Beers with Talos Ep. #93: “More Secure” myths and misconceptions

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 93 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded Sept. 11, 2020 On today’s show, we take several of t...

Threat Source newsletter for Oct. 1, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. In the past, we’ve covered what disinformation otherwise known as “fake news” is and who spreads it. Now, we’re diving into why it works, and why it’s so easy for people to spread. Check out our full paper here to gain a lot of...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution bugs in NVIDIA D3D10 driver

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in the NVIDIA D3D10 driver. This driver supports multiple GPUs that NVIDIA produces. An adversary could exploit these vulnerabilities by...

LodaRAT Update: Alive and Well

By Chris Neal. During our continuous monitoring of LodaRAT, Cisco Talos observed changes in the threat that add new functionality. Multiple new versions of LodaRAT have been spotted being used in the wild.These new versions of LodaRAT abandoned their previous obfuscation techniques.Direct...

Microsoft Netlogon exploitation continues to rise

Cisco Talos is tracking a spike in exploitation attempts against the Microsoft vulnerability CVE-2020-1472, an elevation of privilege bug in Netlogon, outlined in the August Microsoft Patch Tuesday report. The vulnerability stems from a flaw in a cryptographic authentication scheme used by the...

Threat Roundup for September 18 to September 25

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

Threat Source newsletter for Sept. 24, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. After months years? in beta, an official release candidate is out now for Snort 3. Stay tuned for an officially official release in about a month. In other Snort rules, we also have a deep dive into our detection and prevention of...

The Internet did my homework

By Jaeson Schultz and Matt Valites. As students return to school for in-person and virtual learning, Cisco Talos discovered an increase in DNS requests coming into Umbrella resolving domains we classify as "academic fraud." Data from Pew Research on back-to-school dates aligns with the growth we...

New Snort, ClamAV coverage strikes back against Cobalt Strike

By Nick Mavis. Editing by Joe Marshall and Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos is releasing a new research paper called “The Art and Science of Detecting Cobalt Strike.” We recently released a more granular set of updated SNORTⓇ and ClamAVⓇ detection signatures to detect attempted obfuscation and exfiltrati...

Beers with Talos ep. #92: Trending in Your Network — Disinformation

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 92 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded Aug. 26, 2020 Disinformation is front and center rig...

Threat Roundup for September 11 to September 18

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

Threat Source newsletter for Sept. 17, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We’ve got a couple of vulnerabilities you should know about. Monday, we disclosed a bug in Google Chrome’s PDFium feature that opens the door for an adversary to execute remote code. Our researchers also discovered several...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Remote code execution vulnerability Apple Safari

Marcin "Icewall" Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Apple Safari web browser contains a remote code execution vulnerability in its Webkit feature. Specifically, an attacker could trigger a use-after-free condition in WebCore, the DOM-rendering system for...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Nitro Pro PDF reader

Cisco Talos researchers discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple code execution vulnerabilities in the Nitro Pro PDF reader. Nitro PDF allows users to save, read, sign and edit PDFs on their computers. The software contains vulnerabilities th...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Memory corruption in Google PDFium

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Google Chrome's PDFium feature could be exploited by an adversary to corrupt memory and potentially execute remote code. Chrome is a popular, free web browser available on all operating systems. PDFium allows...

Threat Roundup for September 4 to September 11

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

Threat Source newsletter for Sept. 10, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. In our continued research on election security, we have a new video roundtable discussion up on our YouTube page. In this Q&A-style format, I ask our researchers questions about the work they’ve done researching disinformation aka...

Roundtable video: Disinformation and election security

By Jon Munshaw. In our continued coverage of election security, we decided to sit down with four Talos and Cisco researchers to discuss disinformation. As we outlined in our recent research paper, disinformation is one of the cornerstones of threat actors' efforts to disrupt the American election...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Privilege escalation in Windows 10 CLFS driver

Marcin “Icewall” Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Windows 10 Common Log File System. CLFS is a general-purpose logging service that can be used by software clients running in user-mo...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Sept. 2020 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing more than 120 vulnerabilities across its array of products. Twenty-three of the vulnerabilities are considered “critical" while the vast remainder are ranked as “important.” Users of all Microsoft and Windows...

Threat Roundup for August 28 to September 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 28 and Sept. 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 characteristics...

Threat Source newsletter for Sept. 3, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. We recently uncovered a series of email campaigns utilizing links to malicious documents hosted on legitimate file-sharing platforms to spread malware. The campaigns distributed various malware payloads including Gozi ISFB, ZLoade...

Salfram: Robbing the place without removing your name tag

By Holger Unterbrink and Edmund Brumaghin. Threat summary Cisco Talos recently uncovered a series of email campaigns utilizing links to malicious documents hosted on legitimate file-sharing platforms to spread malware.The campaigns distributed various malware payloads including Gozi ISFB, ZLoader...

Quarterly Report: Incident Response trends in Summer 2020

By David Liebenberg and Caitlin Huey. For the fifth quarter in a row, Cisco Talos Incident Response CTIR observed ransomware dominating the threat landscape. Infections involved a wide variety of malware families including Ryuk, Maze, LockBit, and Netwalker, among others. In a continuation of...

Better email classification, courtesy of you

Cisco customers with Email Security Appliances ESA or Cloud Email Security CES accounts already know the benefits of Cisco’s email filtering. Every day, millions of malicious emails are automatically sent to the trash bin. Cisco encourages customers to participate in honing those filters by...

Beers with Talos ep. #91: Get the FUD out

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 91 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded Aug. 14, 2020 Let’s talk about FUD. It’s not enough ...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Code execution, memory corruption vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear

Emmanuel Tacheau of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos recently discovered two vulnerabilities in Accusoft ImageGear. The ImageGear library is a document-imaging developer toolkit to assist users with image conversion, creation, editing and more. There...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple SQL, code injection vulnerabilities in OpenSIS

Yuri Kramarz and Yves Younan discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw Cisco Talos researchers recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the OpenSIS software family. OpenSIS is a student information management system for K-12 students. It is available in commercial and open-sour...

Threat Roundup for August 21 to August 27

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 21 and Aug. 27. 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 for Aug. 27, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. As part of our continued look at election security ahead of the November election, we have another research paper out this week. This time, we’re taking a closer look at disinformation campaigns, popularly known as “fake news.” Th...

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...

What to expect when you're electing: The building blocks of disinformation campaigns

By Nick Biasini, Kendall McKay and Matt Valites. As Cisco Talos discovered during our four-year investigation into election security, securing elections is an extremely difficult, complex task. In the first paper in our election series, “What to expect when you’re electing,” Talos outlined how th...

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

Marcin Towalski of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Google Chrome web browser contains a use-after-free vulnerability in its WebGL component that could allow a user to execute arbitrary code in the context of the browser process. This vulnerability specifically...

Threat Roundup for August 14 to August 21

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 14 and Aug. 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: Internet Systems Consortium BIND server DoS

Emanuel Almeida of Cisco Systems discovered this vulnerability. Blog by Jon Munshaw. The Internet Systems Consortium’s BIND server contains a denial-of-service vulnerability that exists when processing TCP traffic through the libuv library. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by flooding t...

Threat Source newsletter for Aug. 20, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. Hactivism always seems to cool and noble in the movies. Video games and TV shows have no shortage of their “hacker heroes,” too. But what are the real-world consequences of users who release sensitive information or carry out data...

Beers with Talos Ep. #90: Hacktivism – Understanding the real-world consequences

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 90 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded July 31, 2020 This week in BWT land, we’re discussin...

Beers with Talos Ep. #89: What to do when you're the pwnd one

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 89 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos:Apple Podcasts Google PodcastsSpotify StitcherIf iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. By Mitch Neff. Recorded July 17, 2020 The gang's all back this week, and we...

Attribution: A Puzzle

By Martin Lee, Paul Rascagneres and Vitor Ventura. Introduction The attribution of cyber attacks is hard. It requires collecting diverse intelligence, analyzing it and deciding who is responsible. Rarely does the evidence available to researchers reach a level of proof that would be acceptable in...

Threat Roundup for August 7 to August 14

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14. 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 for Aug. 13, 2020

Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw. Good afternoon, Talos readers. It’s really tough to attribute cyber attacks. We know it. You know it. But why is that, exactly? And why do we want to attribute attacks so badly anyway? In our latest blog post, we look at why attribution is challenging, and what...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Aug. 2020 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities

By Jon Munshaw. Microsoft released its monthly security update Tuesday, disclosing 120 vulnerabilities across its array of products. Sixteen of the vulnerabilities are considered “critical,” including one that Microsoft says is currently being exploited in the wild. Users of all Microsoft and...

Barbervisor: Journey developing a snapshot fuzzer with Intel VT-x

By Cory Duplantis. One of the ways vulnerability researchers find bugs is with fuzzing. At a high level, fuzzing is the process of generating and mutating random inputs for a given target to crash it. In 2017, I started developing a bare metal hypervisor for the purposes of snapshot fuzzing:...