Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple remote code execution bugs in NitroPDF

Cory Duplantis and Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in NitroPDF. Nitro PDF allows users to save, read, sign and edit PDF files on their machines. There are two versions of the product...

Vulnerability spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Schneider Electric Modicon M580

Jared Rittle and Patrick DeSantis of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw. There are several vulnerabilities in the Schneider Electric Modicon M580 that could lead to a variety of conditions, the majority of which can cause a denial of service. The Modicon M580 is the...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday — Oct. 2019: Vulnerability disclosures and Snort coverage

By Jon Munshaw. Microsoft released its monthly security update today, disclosing a variety of vulnerabilities in several of its products. The latest Patch Tuesday discloses 60 vulnerabilities, nine of which are considered "critical," with the rest being deemed "important." This month’s security...

How Tortoiseshell created a fake veteran hiring website to host malware

By Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres with contributions from Jungsoo An. Introduction Cisco Talos recently discovered a threat actor attempting to take advantage of Americans who may be seeking a job, especially military veterans. The actor, previously identified by Symantec as Tortoiseshell,...

Threat Roundup for September 27 to October 4

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 27 and Oct. 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...

Divergent: "Fileless" NodeJS Malware Burrows Deep Within the Host

Update 09/27/2019: Additional information regarding the malware interaction with various online advertisements has been included to highlight the click-fraud related network communications associated with Divergent. Executive summary Cisco Talos recently discovered a new malware loader being used...

Open Document format creates twist in maldoc landscape

By Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres. Introduction Cisco Talos recently observed attackers changing the file formats they use in an attempt to thwart common antivirus engines. This can happen across other file formats, but today, we are showing a change of approach for an actor who has deemed...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Foxit PDF Reader JavaScript Array.includes remote code execution vulnerability

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Foxit PDF Reader contains a remote code execution vulnerability in its JavaScript engine. Foxit aims to be one of the most feature-rich PDF readers on the market, and contains many similar functions to that of Adobe Acrobat Reader...

Threat Roundup for September 20 to September 27

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 20 and Sept. 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...

Threat Source newsletter (Sept. 26)

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. An attacker known as “Tortoiseshell” is using a phony, malicious website to deliver malware. The site specifically targets U.S. military...

Beers with Talos Ep. #62: Fifty shades of shady

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 62 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded Sept. 13, 2019 In one of our "rantier" episodes, the BWT crew dives into the ongoing insidiousness that is...

An in-depth look at cyber insurance: We sat down with risk expert, Cisco's Leslie Lamb

Y2K is known for being one of the most widespread times of panic in IT. It was generally thought that on Dec. 31, 1999, computers across the globe would shut down when they would fail to properly process that it would become the year 2000 the next day. It made headlines across the globe, sent...

Threat Roundup for September 13 to September 20

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 13 and Sept. 20. 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: Multiple vulnerabilities in Atlassian Jira

Ben Taylor of Cisco ASIG discovered these vulnerabilities. Atlassian’s Jira software contains multiple vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to carry out a variety of actions, including the disclosure of sensitive information and the remote execution of JavaScript code. Jira is a piece of...

Threat Source newsletter (Sept. 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’re all still trying to shake off the summer. Gone are the early Fridays, beach vacations and days by the pool. Turns out, attackers m...

New Cisco Talos web reputation verdicts

Cisco Talos has updated and expanded the Talos Threat Levels used to describe our web reputation verdicts. As you will see in the chart below, we are increasing the amount of reputation verdicts from three to five. We are retaining the Unknown category, just as before. Cisco Security products wil...

Emotet is back after a summer break

By Colin Grady, William Largent, and Jaeson Schultz. Emotet is still evolving, five years after its debut as a banking trojan. It is one of the world's most dangerous botnets and malware droppers-for-hire. The malware payloads dropped by Emotet serve to more fully monetize their attacks, and ofte...

Cryptocurrency miners aren’t dead yet: Documenting the voracious but simple “Panda”

By Christopher Evans and David Liebenberg. Executive summary A new threat actor named "Panda" has generated thousands of dollars worth of the Monero cryptocurrency through the use of remote access tools RATs and illicit cryptocurrency-mining malware. This is far from the most sophisticated actor...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Aspose PDF API

Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in the Aspose.PDF API. Aspose provides a series of APIs for manipulating or converting a large family of document formats. These vulnerabilities exist in API...

Vulnerability Spotlight: AMD ATI Radeon ATIDXX64.DLL shader functionality remote code execution vulnerability

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Some AMD Radeon cards contain a remote code execution vulnerability in their ATIDXX64.DLL driver. AMD produces the Radeon line of hardware, which includes graphics cards and graphics processing units. This specific vulnerability exists on...

Threat Roundup for September 6 to September 13

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 6 and Sept. 13. 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 (Sept. 12, 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. You’ve heard it a million times: Always patch. But in case you needed another example that it’s important, Cisco Incident Response took ...

Watchbog and the Importance of Patching

By Luke DuCharme and Paul Lee. What Happened? Cisco Incident Response CSIRS recently responded to an incident involving the Watchbog cryptomining botnet. The attackers were able to exploit CVE-2018-1000861 to gain a foothold and install the Watchbog malware on the affected systems. This Linux-bas...

Beers with Talos Ep. #61: Hacking for good is a bad idea

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 61 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded Aug. 30, 2019: In this extra-sized episode, we cover a lot, starting with Retadup, and discussing the intricate...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday — Sept. 2019: Vulnerability disclosures and Snort coverage

By Jon Munshaw. Microsoft released its monthly security update today, disclosing a variety of vulnerabilities in several of its products. The latest Patch Tuesday covers 85 vulnerabilities, 19 of which are rated “critical," 65 that are considered "important" and one "moderate." There is also a...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Denial-of-service vulnerabilities in some NETGEAR routers

Dave McDaniel of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. The NETGEAR N300 line of wireless routers contains two denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The N300 is a small and affordable wireless router that contains the basic features of a wireless router. An attacker could exploit these bugs b...

Threat Roundup for August 30 to September 6

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 30 and Sept. 6. 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. 5, 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. By now, nearly everyone has heard of BlueKeep. It definitely sounds scary, with of this talk of wormable bugs and WannaCry. But so far, ...

GhIDA: Ghidra decompiler for IDA Pro

By Andrea Marcelli Executive Summary Cisco Talos is releasing two new tools for IDA Pro: GhIDA and Ghidraaas. GhIDA is an IDA Pro plugin that integrates the Ghidra decompiler in the IDA workflow, giving users the ability to rename and highlight symbols and improved navigation and comments. GhIDA...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Information disclosure vulnerability in Blynk-Library

Lilith Wyatt of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Cisco Talos recently discovered an information disclosure vulnerability in Blynk-Library. Blynk-Library is a small library for connecting more than 400 different embedded device models into a private or enterprise Blynk-Server instance...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Two vulnerabilities in Epignosis eFront

Yuri Kramarz of Security Advisory Incident Response EMEAR discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos discovered two vulnerabilities in Epignosis eFront — one of which could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on the victim system, and another that opens the victim machine to SQL...

Threat Roundup for August 23 to August 30

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 23 and Aug. 30. 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. #60: Summer camp flashbacks and defining your intel

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 60 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded Aug. 16, 2019 — The understatement of the day would be the guys were in some kind of mood when we recorded this...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple vulnerabilities in Aspose APIs

Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in various Aspose APIs. Aspose provides a series of APIs for manipulating or converting a large family of document formats. These vulnerabilities exist in AP...

Threat Source newsletter (Aug. 22)

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. What’s old is new again. Our research this week centers around a series of long-lasting threat actors and malware that have been given n...

RAT Ratatouille: Backdooring PCs with leaked RATs

By Edmund Brumaghin and Holger Unterbrink. Executive summary Orcus RAT and RevengeRAT are two of the most popular remote access trojans RATs in use across the threat landscape. Since its emergence in 2016, various adversaries used RevengeRAT to attack organizations and individuals around the worl...

China Chopper still active 9 years later

By Paul Rascagneres and Vanja Svajcer. Introduction Threats will commonly fade away over time as they're discovered, reported on, and detected. But China Chopper has found a way to stay relevant, active and effective nine years after its initial discovery. China Chopper is a web shell that allows...

New 4CAN tool helps identify vulnerabilities in on-board car computers

By Alex DeTrano, Jason Royes, and Matthew Valites. Executive summary Modern automobiles contain hundreds of sensors and mechanics that communicate via computers to understand their surrounding environment. Those components provide real-time information to drivers, connect the vehicle to a global...

Threat Roundup for August 16 to August 23

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 16 and Aug. 23. 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. 22)

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. A lot of people may think that cyber insurance is this new, unexplored field that carries a lot of questions. But did you know that thes...

Talos DEFCON badge build instructions and use

By Patrick Mullen. We want to thank everyone who stopped by the Cisco Talos booth at DEFCON's Blue Team Village earlier this month. We handed out these badges at our area where we had Snort rules challenges, reverse-Capture the Flag and recruiters ready to answer attendees' career advice question...

What you — and your company — should know about cyber insurance

By Jon Munshaw and Joe Marshall. It’s no longer a question of “if” any given company or organization is going to be hit with a cyber attack — it’s when. And when that attack comes, who is willing to take on that risk? For some groups, it may be that they feel they are fully prepared to take on th...

Beers with Talos Ep. #59: The tardy episode

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast episode No. 59 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Recorded 8/2/19 - Yes, I know what today’s date is. We got really busy last week and I am sorry that the podcast is late...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple bugs in OpenWeave and Nest Labs Nest Cam IQ indoor camera

Lilith Wyatt and Claudio Bozzato of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the Nest Cam IQ Indoor camera. One of Nest Labs’ most advanced internet-of-things devices, the Nest Cam IQ Indoor integrates Security-Enhanced Linux in...

Threat Roundup for August 9 to August 16

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 9 and Aug. 16. 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. 15)

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. Sorry we missed you last week, we were all away at Hacker Summer Camp. If you missed us at Black Hat, we have a roundup up on the blog o...

Talos Black Hat 2019 flash talk roundup

Talos went wall-to-wall at Hacker Summer Camp, showing up to Black Hat and DEFCON with talks, challenges, advice and education. Over the course of two days at Black Hat, Cisco Security hosted more than 20 talks at our booth, many featuring Talos researchers and analysts. In case you couldn't swin...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday — Aug. 2019: Vulnerability disclosures and Snort coverage

Microsoft released its monthly security update today, disclosing a variety of vulnerabilities in several of its products. The latest Patch Tuesday covers 97 vulnerabilities, 31 of which are rated “critical," 65 that are considered "important" and one "moderate." This month’s security update cover...

Threat Roundup for August 2 to August 9

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Aug. 2 and Aug. 9. 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 vulnerabilities in NVIDIA Windows GPU Display Driver, VMware ESXi, Workstation and Fusion

Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary VMware ESXi, Workstation and Fusion are affected by an out-of-bounds write vulnerability that can be triggered using a specially crafted shader file. This vulnerability can be triggered from a VMware guest, affecting t...