Microsoft Patches Out-of-Band Internet Explorer Scripting Engine Vulnerability After Exploitation Detected in the Wild

Overview Microsoft released an out-of-band OOB patch on Wednesday related to a vulnerability in the scripting engine of Internet Explorer. This particular vulnerability is believed to be actively exploited in the wild and should be patched immediately. This remote code execution bug lies in the w...

As Cryptocurrency Crash Continues, Will Mining Threat Follow?

Post authored by Nick Biasini. Executive Summary As 2018 draws to a close, one technology has definitively left its mark on the year: cryptocurrencies. Digital currencies started the year out strong after a meteoric rise toward the end of 2017. Since then, it's safe to say that cryptocurrencies...

Connecting the dots between recently active cryptominers

Post authored by David Liebenberg and Andrew Williams. Executive Summary Through Cisco Talos' investigation of illicit cryptocurrency mining campaigns in the past year, we began to notice that many of these campaigns shared remarkably similar TTPs, which we at first mistakenly interpreted as bein...

Beers with Talos EP 43: Espionage, Encryption, and CISO Square One

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 43 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 43 show notes: Recorded Dec. 7, 2018. Several of us are under the weather, but the show must go on. We did our best, as alway...

Bitcoin Bomb Scare Associated with Sextortion Scammers

This blog was written by Jaeson Schultz. Organizations across the country are on edge today after a flurry of phony bomb threats hit several public entities Thursday, such as universities, schools and news outlets, among others. The attackers distributed malicious emails claiming to have placed...

Threat Roundup for Dec. 7 to Dec. 14

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Dec. 07 and Dec. 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...

Cisco Coverage for Shamoon 2 & 3

Update Dec. 14, 2018 10:30 CST: Added new Shamoon 3 IOCs Shamoon is a type of destructive malware that has been previously associated with attacks against various organizations in the oil and gas industry that we've been tracking since 2012. A new variant of this threat, identified as Shamoon 2,...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC text field remote code execution vulnerability

Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Executive summary Adobe Acrobat Reader DC contains a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely execute code on the victim’s machine. If the attacker tricks the user into opening a specially crafted PDF with specific...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday — December 2018: 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 38 vulnerabilities, nine of which are rated “critical” and 29 that are considered “important.” There are no “moderate” or “low” vulnerabilities...

in(Secure) messaging apps — How side-channel attacks can compromise privacy in WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal

This blog post is authored by Vitor Ventura. Executive summary Messaging applications have been around since the inception of the internet. But recently, due to the increased awareness around mass surveillance in some countries, more users are installing end-to-end encrypted apps dubbed "secure...

Threat Roundup for Nov. 30 to Dec. 7

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Nov. 30 and Dec. 07. 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...

An introduction to offensive capabilities of Active Directory on UNIX

Tim Wadhwa-Brown of Portcullis Labs authored this post. In preparation for our talk at Black Hat Europe, Security Advisory EMEAR would like to share the background on our recent research into some common Active Directory integration solutions. Just as with Windows, these solutions can be utilized...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Netgate pfSense system_advanced_misc.php powerd_normal_mode Command Injection Vulnerability

Brandon Stultz of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing a command injection vulnerability in Netgate pfSense systemadvancedmisc.php powerdnormalmode. pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat...

Threat Roundup for Nov. 23 to Nov. 30

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

DNSpionage Campaign Targets Middle East

This blog post was authored by Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres. Update 2018-11-27 15:30:00 EDT: A Russian-language document has been removed. Subsequent analysis leads us to believe it is unrelated to this investigation. Executive Summary Cisco Talos recently discovered a new campaign targetin...

Beers with Talos EP42: To the Moon, Everyone!

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 42 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 42 show notes: Recorded Nov. 16, 2018. Cyber moonshot, baby! It’s just like that time the U.S. raced everyone to the moon,...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in Atlantis Word Processor

A member of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Executive summary Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing three remote code execution vulnerabilities in the Atlantis Word Processor. Atlantis Word Processor is a traditional word processor that provides a number of basic features for users, in...

What scams shoppers should look out for on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Every year, more and more Americans are taking care of their holiday shopping on Cyber Monday. Last year, consumers spent a record $6.59 billion during the annual online shopping day, an all-time record, according to Adobe Insights. Still, that doesn’t mean no one is rushing out the night of...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple remote vulnerabilities in TP-Link TL-R600VPN

Vulnerabilities discovered by Carl Hurd and Jared Rittle of Cisco Talos. Cisco Talos is disclosing multiple vulnerabilities in the TP-Link TL-R600VPN router. TP-Link produces a number of different types of small and home office SOHO routers. Talos discovered several bugs in this particular router...

Threat Roundup for Nov. 9 to Nov. 16

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Nov. 09 and Nov. 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...

Beers with Talos Ep. #41: Sex, money and malware

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 41 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 41 show notes: Recorded Nov. 9, 2018 — We tried to make this episode last week, but thanks to some technical difficulties, we...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday — November 2018: 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 53 vulnerabilities, 11 of which are rated "critical," 40 that are rated "important” and one “moderate” and “low” vulnerability, each. The...

Threat Roundup for November 2 to November 9

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Nov. 02 and Nov. 09. 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...

Metamorfo Banking Trojan Keeps Its Sights on Brazil

This blog post was authored by Edmund Brumaghin, Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres, and Vitor Ventura. Executive Summary Financially motivated cybercriminals have used banking trojans for years to steal sensitive financial information from victims. They are often created to gather credit card...

Persian Stalker pillages Iranian users of Instagram and Telegram

This blog post is authored by Danny Adamatis, Warren Mercer, Paul Rascagneres, Vitor Ventura and with the contributions of Eric Kuhla. Introduction State-sponsored actors have a number of different techniques at their disposal to remotely gain access to social media and secure messaging...

Threat Roundup for Oct. 26 to Nov. 2

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Oct. 26 and Nov. 02. 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...

CyberVets U.S.A.: The mission after transition

Christopher Marshall, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, currently serves as Director of Cybersecurity Research for Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. As a veteran of the U.S. Navy, I’ve had the opportunity to use some of the greatest technology this country has to offer — from night vision goggles, to...

Talos Vulnerability Deep Dive - TALOS-2018-0636 / CVE-2018-3971 Sophos HitmanPro.Alert vulnerability

Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Introduction Sophos patched two vulnerabilities in Sophos HitmanPro.Alert in version 3.7.9.759. We publicly disclosed these issues last week here, Cisco Talos will show you the process of developing an exploit for one of these bugs. We wil...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Multiple Vulnerabilities in Yi Technology Home Camera

Vulnerabilities Discovered by Lilith xx of Cisco Talos. Overview Cisco Talos is disclosing multiple vulnerabilities in the firmware of the Yi Technology Home Camera. In order to prevent the exploitation of these vulnerabilities, Talos worked with Yi Technology to make sure a newer version of the...

Anatomy of a sextortion scam

This blog was written by Jaeson Schultz. Since this July, attackers are increasingly spreading sextortion-type attacks across the internet. Cisco Talos has been investigating these campaigns over the past few months. In many cases the spammers harvested email addresses and passwords from a public...

Talos Vulnerability Discovery Year in Review - 2018

Introduction Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Discovery Team investigates software and operating system vulnerabilities in order to discover them before malicious threat actors. We provide this information to vendors so that they can create patches and protect their customers as soon as possible. We...

GPlayed's younger brother is a banker — and it's after Russian banks

This blog post is authored by Vitor Ventura. Introduction Cisco Talos published its findings on a new Android trojan known as "GPlayed" on Oct. 11. At the time, we wrote that the trojan seemed to be in the testing stages of development, based on the malware's code patterns, strings and telemetry...

Threat Roundup for October 19 to October 26

Today, Talos is is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Oct. 19 and Oct. 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...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Talos-2018-0694 - MKVToolNix mkvinfo read_one_element Code Execution Vulnerability

Piotr Bania, Cory Duplantis and Martin Zeiser of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Overview Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing a vulnerability that we identified in the MKVToolNix mkvinfo utility that parses the Matroska file format video files .mkv files. MKVToolNix is a set of tools to...

Vulnerability Spotlight: TALOS-2018-0635/0636 - Sophos HitmanPro.Alert memory disclosure and code execution vulnerabilities

Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos discovered this vulnerability. Overview Cisco Talos is disclosing two vulnerabilities in Sophos HitmanPro.Alert, a malware detection and protection tool. Both vulnerabilities lie in the input/output control IOCTL message handler. One could allow an attacker to read kern...

Beers with Talos EP40: BWT XL feat. SuperMicro, Giant Patches, and More Mobile Malware

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 40 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 40 show notes: Recorded Oct. 19, 2018 — In celebration of episode No. 40 and hitting over 1 million downloads!!!, we go XL...

Threat Roundup for October 12 to October 19

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Oct. 12 and 19. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by...

Beers with Talos EP 39: VB 2018 Rundown and Prevalent Problems with PDF

Beers with Talos BWT Podcast Ep. 39 is now available. Download this episode and subscribe to Beers with Talos: If iTunes and Google Play aren't your thing, click here. Ep. 39 show notes: Recorded Oct. 5, 2018 - We start out with a quick chat to get to know this week’s special guests from the Talo...

Tracking Tick Through Recent Campaigns Targeting East Asia

This blog post is authored by Ashlee Benge and Jungsoo An, with contributions from Dazhuo Li. Summary Since 2016, an advanced threat group that Cisco Talos is tracking has carried out cyberattacks against South Korea and Japan. This group is known by several different names: Tick, Redbaldknight a...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Live Networks LIVE555 streaming media RTSPServer code execution vulnerability

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Lilith Wyatt of Cisco Talos. Cisco Talos is disclosing a code execution vulnerability that has been identified in Live Networks LIVE555 streaming media RTSPServer. LIVE555 Streaming Media is a set of open-source C++ libraries developed by Live Networks Inc...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Linksys ESeries Multiple OS Command Injection Vulnerabilities

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Jared Rittle of Cisco Talos. Cisco Talos is disclosing several vulnerabilities in the operating system on the Linksys E Series of routers. Multiple exploitable OS command injection vulnerabilities exist in the Linksys E Series line of routers. An attacker...

Old dog, new tricks - Analysing new RTF-based campaign distributing Agent Tesla, Loki with PyREbox

This blog post was authored by Edmund Brumaghin and Holger Unterbrink with contributions from Emmanuel Tacheau. Executive Summary Cisco Talos has discovered a new malware campaign that drops the sophisticated information-stealing trojan called "Agent Tesla," and other malware such as the Loki...

Threat Roundup for October 5 to October 12

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Oct. 5 and 12. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by...

GPlayed Trojan - .Net playing with Google Market

This blog post is authored by Vitor Ventura. Introduction In a world where everything is always connected, and mobile devices are involved in individuals' day-to-day lives more and more often, malicious actors are seeing increased opportunities to attack these devices. Cisco Talos has identified...

Microsoft WindowsCodecs.dll SniffAndConvertToWideString Information Leak Vulnerability

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Marcin Noga of Cisco Talos. Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing a vulnerability in the WindowsCodecs.dll component of the Windows operating system. WindowsCodecs.dll is a component library that exists in the implementation of Windows Imaging Component WIC,...

Vulnerability Spotlight: VMWare Workstation DoS Vulnerability

Today, Cisco Talos is disclosing a vulnerability in VMware Workstation that could result in denial of service. VMware Workstation is a widely used virtualization platform designed to run alongside a normal operating system, allowing users to use both virtualized and physical systems concurrently...

Microsoft Patch Tuesday — October 18: 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 49 vulnerabilities, 12 of which are rated "critical," 34 that are rated "important,” two that are considered to have “moderate” severity and on...

Vulnerability in the Intel Unified Shader compiler for the Intel Graphics Accelerator

Vulnerabilities discovered by Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos Talos is disclosing a pointer corruption vulnerability in the Intel Unified Shader compiler for the Intel Graphics Accelerator. Overview In order for the graphics to be produced, the graphics accelerators need to process the OpenGL scripts...

Threat Roundup Sept 28 - Oct 5

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Sept. 28 and Oct. 5. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed b...

Vulnerability Spotlight: Google PDFium JBIG2 Image ComposeToOpt2WithRect Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos Overview Cisco Talos is releasing details of a new vulnerability in Google PDFium's JBIG2 library. An exploitable out-of-bounds read on the heap vulnerability exists in the JBIG2-parsing code in Google Chrome, version 67.0.3396.99. A specially craft...