Highlighting TA866/Asylum Ambuscade Activity Since 2021

TA866 also known as Asylum Ambuscade is a threat actor that has been conducting intrusion operations since at least 2020. TA866 has frequently relied on commodity and custom tooling to facilitate post-compromise activities. These tools often perform specific functions and are deployed and used as...

Threat actor abuses Gophish to deliver new PowerRAT and DCRAT

Cisco Talos recently discovered a phishing campaign using an open-source phishing toolkit called Gophish by an unknown threat actor. The campaign involves modular infection chains that are either Maldoc or HTML-based infections and require the victim's intervention to trigger the infection chain...

Akira ransomware continues to evolve

Akira continues to cement its position as one of the most prevalent ransomware operations in the threat landscape, according to Cisco Talos' findings and analysis. Their success is partly due to the fact that they are constantly evolving. For example, after Akira already developed a new version o...

What I’ve learned in my first 7-ish years in cybersecurity

When I first interviewed with Joel Esler for my position at Cisco Talos, I remember when the time came for me to ask questions, one thing stood out. I asked what resources were available to me to learn about cybersecurity, because I was totally new to the space. His answer: The people. When I ask...

UAT-5647 targets Ukrainian and Polish entities with RomCom malware variants

Cisco Talos has observed a new wave of attacks active since at least late 2023, from a Russian speaking group we track as "UAT-5647", against Ukrainian government entities and unknown Polish entities. UAT-5647 is also known as RomCom and is widely attributed to Russian speaking threat actors in...

Protecting major events: An incident response blueprint

Ensuring the cybersecurity of major events -- whether it's sports, professional conferences, expos, inter-government meetings or other gatherings -- is a complex and time-intensive task. It requires a comprehensive approach and collaboration among various stakeholders, including vendors,...

What NIST’s latest password standards mean, and why the old ones weren’t working

Say goodbye to the days of using the "@" symbol to mean "a" in your password or replacing an "S" with a "$." The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST recently announced new guidelines for the ways website and organizations should handle password creation and management that wi...

Ghidra data type archive for Windows driver functions

While reverse-engineering Windows drivers with Ghidra, it is common to encounter a function or data type that is not recognized during disassembly. This is because Ghidra does not natively include the majority of the definitions for data types and functions used by Windows drivers. Thankfully,...

Vulnerability in popular PDF reader could lead to arbitrary code execution; Multiple issues in GNOME project

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Research team recently disclosed six new security vulnerabilities across a range of software, including one in a popular PDF reader that could lead to arbitrary code execution. Foxit PDF Reader, one of the most popular alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, contains a memory...

Largest Patch Tuesday since July includes two exploited in the wild, three critical vulnerabilities

The largest Microsoft Patch Tuesday since July includes two vulnerabilities that have been exploited in the wild and three other critical issues across the company's range of hardware and software offerings. October's monthly security update from Microsoft includes fixes for 117 CVEs, the most in...

CISA is warning us (again) about the threat to critical infrastructure networks

Government-run water systems and other critical infrastructure are still at risk from state-sponsored actors, according to a renewed warning from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA released an advisory last week on the matter of days after a small water treatment...

Threat actor believed to be spreading new MedusaLocker variant since 2022

Cisco Talos has discovered a financially motivated threat actor, active since 2022, recently observed delivering a MedusaLocker ransomware variant. Intelligence collected by Talos on tools regularly employed by the threat actor allows us to see an estimate of the amount and countries of origin of...

Are hardware supply chain attacks “cyber attacks?”

The recent attacks in the Middle East triggering explosions on pagers has raised new fears around physical hardware supply chain attacks. In cybersecurity, we typically consider supply chain attacks to target software, in which adversaries infect a legitimate tool with a malicious, fake update th...

Simple Mail Transfer Pirates: How threat actors are abusing third-party infrastructure to send spam

Attackers are abusing normal features of legitimate web sites to transmit spam, such as the traditional method of verifying the creation of a new account. This web infrastructure and its associated email infrastructure is otherwise used for legitimate purposes, which makes blocking these messages...

Talos discovers denial-of-service vulnerability in Microsoft Audio Bus; Potential remote code execution in popular open-source PLC

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Research team recently disclosed two vulnerabilities in Microsoft products that have been patched by the company over the past two Patch Tuesdays. One is a vulnerability in the High-Definition Audio Bus Driver in Windows systems that could lead to a denial of service,...

Talk of election security is good, but we still need more money to solve the problem

Last week, six Secretaries of State testified to U.S. Congress about the current state of election security ahead of November's Presidential election. Some of the same topics came up as usual -- disinformation campaigns, influence from foreign actors, and the physical protection of poll workers o...

We can try to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap, but that doesn’t necessarily mean more jobs for defenders

I have written about the dreaded " cybersecurity skills gap" more times than I can remember in this newsletter, but I feel like it's time to revisit this topic again. That's because the White House announced a new initiative last week for the U.S. government called the " Service for America"...

Vulnerability in Acrobat Reader could lead to remote code execution; Microsoft patches information disclosure issue in Windows API

Cisco Talos' Vulnerability Research team discovered two vulnerabilities have been disclosed and fixed over the past few weeks. Talos discovered a time-of-check time-of-use vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat Reader, one of the most popular PDF readers currently available, and an information disclosure...

Four zero-days included in group of 79 vulnerabilities Microsoft discloses, including one with 9.8 severity score

Microsoft disclosed four vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited in the wild as part of its regular Patch Tuesday security update this week in what's become a regular occurrence for the company's patches in 2024. Two of the zero-day vulnerabilities, CVE-2024-38226 and CVE-2024-38014,...

DragonRank, a Chinese-speaking SEO manipulator service provider

Key Takeaways Cisco Talos is disclosing a new threat called "DragonRank" that primarily targets countries in Asia and a few in Europe, operating PlugX and BadIIS for search engine optimization SEO rank manipulation. DragonRank exploits targets' web application services to deploy a web shell and...

The 2024 Threat Landscape State of Play

As we head into the final furlong of 2024, we caught up with Talos' Head of Outreach Nick Biasini to ask him what sort of year it's been so far in the threat landscape. In this video, Nick outlines his two major areas of concern. He also focusses on one state-sponsored actor that has been...

Vulnerability in Tencent WeChat custom browser could lead to remote code execution

Certain versions of WeChat, a popular messaging app created by tech giant Tencent, contain a type confusion vulnerability that could allow an adversary to execute remote code. While this issue, CVE-2023-3420, was disclosed and patched in the V8 engine in June 2023, the WeChat Webview component wa...

The best and worst ways to get users to improve their account security

As most quality thoughts go, my most recent musing on security came about because of fantasy football. I had to log into my Yahoo Sports account, which I admittedly only ever have to log in to, at most, three times a year for the one fantasy football draft I have on that platform each year and th...

Watch our new documentary, "The Light We Keep: A Project PowerUp Story"

You may have already read about the incredible story of Project PowerUp - how we worked with a multi-company, multi-national team to find a way to keep the lights on in Ukraine in the face of electronic warfare. Today, we are releasing a short documentary on how this story came to be, while...

Threat actors using MacroPack to deploy Brute Ratel, Havoc and PhantomCore payloads

Cisco Talos recently discovered several related Microsoft Office documents uploaded to VirusTotal by various actors between May and July 2024 that were all generated by a version of a payload generator framework called "MacroPack." MacroPack is a framework designated for Red Team exercises, but w...

What kind of summer has it been?

Hello Talos followers. I'm back for my annual takeover of the Threat Source newsletter. First, an update on that killer sloth movie I was so excited about in August 2023. "Slotherhouse" debuted with an impressive $137,133 at the box office, with critics hailing its various set pieces such as "dea...

The vulnerabilities we uncovered by fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks

Hunting for vulnerabilities in industrial environments has become increasingly important as industrial control systems and critical infrastructure face threats from state-sponsored actors and ransomware groups hoping to cash out on million-dollar payments. Fuzzing has long been one of our favorit...

Fuzzing µCOS protocol stacks, Part 2: Handling multiple requests per test case

So far in this series, Ive developed a fuzzer for the µC/HTTP-server. As described in the previous post, this fuzzer reads from a file to enable compatibility with AFL++. That implementation only fuzzes a single request at a time. Although that single request fuzzer uncovered a few security...

Fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks, Part 1: HTTP server fuzzing

This is the first post of a three-part series, where we will be delving into the intricacies of fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks. The techniques I will discuss are universally applicable to various RTOS environments, though our focus will primarily be on µC/OS. Ill highlight some of the strategic co...

Fuzzing µC/OS protocol stacks, Part 3: TCP/IP server fuzzing, implementing a TAP driver

This is the final post in the three-part series that details techniques I used to fuzz two µC/OS protocol stacks: µC/TCP-IP and µC/HTTP-server. The first post highlighted code modifications necessary for developing a fuzzing harness tailored for the µC/HTTP-server. The second discussed a techniqu...

BlackByte blends tried-and-true tradecraft with newly disclosed vulnerabilities to support ongoing attacks

The BlackByte ransomware group continues to leverage tactics, techniques and procedures TTPs that have formed the foundation of its tradecraft since its inception, continuously iterating its use of vulnerable drivers to bypass security protections and deploying a self-propagating, wormable...

No, not every Social Security number in the U.S. was stolen

My current least favorite thing about the churn of social media that Ive seen over the past week is waves of stories, posts and videos saying that every U.S. citizens Social Security number has been stolen or potentially viewed by a threat actor. The claim comes from a class action lawsuit filed ...

MoonPeak malware from North Korean actors unveils new details on attacker infrastructure

Cisco Talos is exposing infrastructure we assess with high confidence is being used by a state-sponsored North Korean nexus of threat actors we track as "UAT-5394," including for staging, command and control C2 servers, and test machines the threat actors use to test their implants. Our analysis ...

How multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft apps for macOS pave the way to stealing permissions

Cisco Talos has identified eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft applications for the macOS operating system. An adversary could exploit these vulnerabilities by injecting malicious libraries into Microsofts applications to gain their entitlements and user-granted permissions. Permissions regulate...

AI, election security headline discussions at Black Hat and DEF CON

As promised, Im back this week to recap some of the top stories coming out of Black Hat and DEF CON. Also as promised, AI was the talk of Vegas during Hacker Summer Camp or at least from what Ive been reading and hearing, I wasnt there in person. Several exhibitions and talks at both conferences...

Talos discovers 11 vulnerabilities between Microsoft, Adobe software disclosed on Patch Tuesday

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team recently discovered 11 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows CLIPSP.SYS and Adobe Acrobat Reader that were all disclosed this week as part of the companys regular security updates. For more on Patch Tuesday, check out Talos blog post here. Eight of the...

Talos discovers Microsoft kernel mode driver vulnerabilities that could lead to SYSTEM privileges; Seven other critical issues disclosed

Microsoft disclosed six security vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited across its products as part of the companys regular Patch Tuesday security update. In all, Augusts monthly round of patches from Microsoft included 87 vulnerabilities, seven of which are considered critical. In...

A refresher on Talos’ open-source tools and the importance of the open-source community

Open-source software that is free to download, deploy and modify is a vital component in the fight for cyber security. Freely available software not only helps defend systems that would otherwise be unprotected, but it also allows people to learn and develop vital cybersecurity skills. In this...

The top stories coming out of the Black Hat cybersecurity conference

Over the next two weeks, two of the largest cybersecurity conferences in the world will take place in Las Vegas: Black Hat and DEF CON. That means product announcements, buzzwords and stories about "X smart appliance could burn your house down!" or something like that. Over the next two weeks, Il...

Ryan Pentney reflects on 10 years of Talos and his many roles from the Sourcefire days

As the adage goes: "You dont know what you dont know." For Ryan Pentney and his team, they know what they dont know. And they wake up every morning trying to figure out how they can answer those questions about emerging threats and some of the largest state-sponsored actors in the world. Pentney ...

There is no real fix to the security issues recently found in GitHub and other similar software

A recently discovered security issue in GitHub and other, similar, control system products seem to fit into the classic "its a feature, not a bug" category. Security researchers last week published their findings into some research of how deleted forks in GitHub work, potentially leaving the door...

APT41 likely compromised Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute with ShadowPad and Cobalt Strike

Cisco Talos discovered a malicious campaign that compromised a Taiwanese government-affiliated research institute that started as early as July 2023, delivering the ShadowPad malware, Cobalt Strike and other customized tools for post-compromise activities. The activity conducted on the victim...

Detecting evolving threats: NetSupport RAT campaign

Cisco Talos is actively tracking multiple malware campaigns that utilize NetSupport RAT for persistent infections. These campaigns evade detection through obfuscation and updates. Snort can provide a strong defense before this malware reaches endpoints. In this first Deep Dive with NTDR, we explo...

Where to find Talos at BlackHat 2024

With Black Hat just a week away, Cisco Talos is gearing up for another year of heading to Las Vegas to share in some of the latest major cybersecurity announcements, research and news. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Cisco Talos, as the Talos brand was officially launched in August 2014 a...

Out-of-bounds read vulnerability in NVIDIA driver; Open-source flashcard software contains multiple security issues

Cisco Talos Vulnerability Research team has helped to disclose and patch six new vulnerabilities over the past three weeks, including one in a driver that powers certain NVIDIA graphics cards. The majority of the vulnerabilities that Talos disclosed during this period exist in Ankitects Anki, an...

"There is no business school class that would ever sit down and design Talos"

As part of the celebrations of Cisco Talos turning 10, wed like to take you back to where it all began: How we formed our mission of protecting our customers and making the internet suck a bit less, an insight into our culture, and how we came to work with some of the most talented human beings o...

The massive computer outage over the weekend was not a cyber attack, and I’m not sure why we have to keep saying that

Youre not going to believe this, but there was a lot of misinformation on social media over the weekend after the massive CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage. As airlines cancelled flights, hospitals had to reschedule patients and some companies just flat-out couldnt work on Friday, people were quick to...

IR Trends: Ransomware on the rise, while technology becomes most targeted sector

Business email compromise BEC and ransomware were the top threats observed by Cisco Talos Incident Response Talos IR in the second quarter of 2024, together accounting for 60 percent of engagements. Although there was a decrease in BEC engagements from last quarter, it was still a major threat fo...

A (somewhat) complete timeline of Talos’ history

A lot has happened in Talos 10 years of existence. And to celebrate our birthday, we wanted to look back on some of the major moments in Talos history. Heres an overview of some of the major events, cyber attacks, research breakthroughs and more that truly make Talos Talos. We hope this walk down...

It's best to just assume you’ve been involved in a data breach somehow

Between AT&T, all the follow-on activity from Snowflake, Microsoft Outlook, and more, its best to probably just assume at this point that your personal information has somehow been involved in a data breach. Were only halfway through 2024, and weve already seen some of the largest data breaches a...