Talos Takes

For the first time in Talos Takes history, we have a whopping TWO guests on to talk about Talos’ latest research paper. In this episode, Dmytro Korzhevin and Azim Khodjibaev discuss their work interviewing a LockBit ransomware operator. They spent multiple weeks speaking to this actor over social media, and eventually turned their conversations into a paper that lays out what we learned about the ransomware landscape. Dmytro and Azim talked about lessons learned, what surprised them about the threat actor, and how actors choose their targets.

When Pierre Cadieux steps into a Cisco Talos Incident Response engagement, the first thing he wants to do is check out the customer’s logs. But if there are no logs to be found, he’ll be pretty limited in the kinds of insights he can provide.This has come up several times during the SolarWinds era, when customers are wanting to know if they were targeted in the widespread supply chain attack. So in this episode of Talos Takes, Pierre joins the show to discuss why it’s so important to keep logs for everything — log-ins, events, applications and more.

Welcome to the first-ever XL edition of Talos Takes. This one is a little longer than usual, but we promise you it’s worth it. We recently brought together researchers from all corners of Talos to talk about what we know about SolarWinds so far, and what’s still to be discovered. Our various teams have spent the past several months diving deep into the SolarWinds supply chain attack, and this is a collection of Talos’ knowledge on the current situation. Talking points include whether it’s fair to refer to this campaign as “SolarWinds,” what other initial infection vectors there may be, the breadth of the attack and more boots-on-the-ground intelligence. If you want to watch the video version, head to our YouTube page.

After researching and writing about ObliqueRAT for several months now, Asheer Malhotra joins Talos Takes for the first time to discuss this trojan. We’ve seen this malware evolve over the past year or so to ad new evasion techniques and find ways to avoid email filters and usual antivirus protections. Asheer talks about his history researching this malware and provides some advice on how to avoid email spam and the other maldocs these actors try to spread.

Chris Neal from Talos Outreach has followed LodaRAT for years now. It’s gone from a fairly small threat to a full-on malware with several features that target all sorts of Android devices. Chris joins the show this week to discuss his history of researching LodaRAT and updates us on its latest TTPs. Find out how this trojan tries to trick users into downloading it on their phones and how it hunts for your banking information.

Everyone had jokes when it came to the vulnerabilities we recently disclosed in a WiFi-connected air fryer. But there are actually some lessons to take away from this, such as: “Not everything needs to be connected to the internet.” Joe Marshall joins the show this week to discuss all things “smart” appliances, how to protect your network and the repercussions of these specific air fryer vulnerabilities.

Cisco Talos recently discovered a wave of attackers spreading malware via collaboration apps like Discord and Slack. On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, Nick Biasini joins the show to bring us inside his research process for this post and discuss why these attacks have been so successful. Jon brings up his Dungeons & Dragons group, too, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

To celebrate World Password Day this week, we’re talking about getting rid of passwords! Dave Lewis, a global advisory CISO for Cisco Secure, joins Jon to talk about all things passwordless. This is a new initiative Cisco Secure and Duo have undertaken to get network administrators to move away from using passwords in favor of other forms of authentication. Jon and Dave discuss why passwords can be dangerous, the benefits of going passwordless and how to convince longtime users to ditch traditional login credentials.

In this special “XL edition” of Talos Takes, we’re bringing you the audio version of our live stream this week discussing the Kaseya supply chain attack. Nick Biasini from Talos Outreach went live with Hazel Burton, a Cisco product marketing manager, to discuss what transpired over the long Fourth of July weekend. Nick discussed the Kaseya exploit leveraged in this campaign, plus the follow-on ransomware attacks. This is the best place to get the tl;dr on what happened, what you need to be doing now, and what Cisco Secure solutions can keep you protected.

Asheer Malhotra from Talos Outreach has followed Transparent Tribe for years now. This APT has been all over the place using all sorts of trojans. So where my they go next? Asheer joins Talos Takes this week to discuss the malware this group deploys and how they use typo-squatted domains to lure victims in.

With major cyber attacks in recent years against major U.S. critical infrastructure suppliers like Norsk Hydro and Colonial Pipeline, we’re in a new world of CI cybersecurity. New threats require new approaches to defense. And in the U.S., this is likely going to include partnerships between those who manage critical infrastructure, government and the private cybersecurity sector.Talos recently outlined what this may look like in America. One of the authors of that post, Joe Marshall, joins Jon Munshaw this week on Talos Takes to talk about public-private partnerships to defend critical infrastructure.

We’ve spent many minutes (that’s the point of the podcast, after all) discussing internet-of-things devices on this podcast. As consumers start having more “smart” devices connected to their home network, they may want an easy solution to keeping those devices safe. But what if that device gets owned?Carl Hurd of our vulnerability research team recently discovered several vulnerabilities in Trend Micro’s Home Network Security Station. He joins the show for the first time to talk about his research, the pros and cons of these all-in-one home network security devices, and how an attacker could exploit these issues to spy on your devices.

The last time Jon had Asheer Malhotra from Talos Outreach on the show, they covered the Transparent Tribe APT. Asheer joins the show again this week to talk about another threat actor that is very similar to Transparent Tribe, but is just a tad different. Asheer recently co-authored a research paper on the aptly named SideCopy actor, which borrows many TTPs from their fellow actors, including Transparent Tribe. This episode, we’ll talk about SideCopy’s methods, why they may be borrowing so much from those around them and where they could go from here.

Business email compromise may seem like last decade’s threat, but it’s still just as prevalent as ever. A recent FBI report found that it cost users more than $1 billion in 2020, and attackers are now capitalizing on everything from PlayStation 5 sales to the COVID-19 pandemic to still scam people. On this week’s Talos Takes, Nick Biasini recaps his recent research into BEC and discusses why there are some reasons why this threat may never go away (hint: users).

We can set our watches to tax scams every year in April. The bad guys are always looking to steal your information, promising to get you a bigger tax return or do your taxes for you. This year is a bit different because Tax Day is a bit later than usual thanks to — you guessed it — COVID. Attackers are now combining these two topics to create spam campaigns, promising to provide you new information about how COVID affects your taxes, or even promising to send you a gift in exchange for receiving your COVID vaccine. Jaeson Schultz makes his inaugural appearance on Talos Takes to discuss what he’s seeing in the wild and how you can avoid these common scams.

It was only a matter of time before we had Wendy Nather from Cisco Secure Duo on the show. We finally met Beers with Talos’ level of stardom, as Wendy joins the show to discuss SMS messages as a form of multi-factor authentication. We break down why SMS authentication is still around and used by some of our most important services like banks, and what alternatives are out there. We also discuss the dangers of SIM-jacking attacks and the benefits of using Duo’s app-based authentication.

We put this week’s Talos Takes episode together last minute to discuss the Microsoft Exchange Server zero-day vulnerabilities Microsoft disclosed earlier this week. Nick Biasini joins the show to discuss mitigation strategies and what these vulnerabilities mean for your environment at-large. Plus, we discuss why this is another case of patching above all else. For more coverage on this topic, check out the Talos blog.

On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, we go back a month or so to reflect on the Masslogger trojan Talos wrote about earlier this year. This malware may not make national headlines, but that doesn’t mean you should just ignore it. Find out where this trojan is hiding and why it’s after your Outlook and Google Chrome login credentials.

Say you’ve got the basics of security down, and now you want to start putting it into practice. Where do you start? In this Talos Takes episode, we run through some free and low-cost security tools anyone can use to beef up their network. We talk about Snort, built-in security tools on operating systems and more.

It’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month! And you know what that means? It’s time to make everyone more aware! Since we all have that special someone in our lives who could use a refresher on internet hygenie, we figured it was time to talk about bringing up the topic of security to your friends and family who may not be as computer literate as you are. Jon Munshaw and Nick Biasini talk about basic tips to give even your oldest family members and user-friendly programs and services that can improve everyone’s security.

On this episode of Talos Takes, we talk all about attribution. Our guest, Martin Lee, recently co-authored a post on the hurdles government agencies and private researchers alike face when trying to place blame for a cyber attack. Martin talks about why we’re so obsessed with placing the blame, what false flags are and what helpful things can actually come from attributing a threat.

LoLBins sound like they’d be funny, but they’re anything but. These “living-off-the-land binaries” make it so that attackers can more easily hide on your system as they disguise themselves as legitimate processes. On this episode of Talos Takes, Nick Biasini talks about what LoLBins are, exactly, how adversaries use them and how you can spot them on your environment.

With the Equifax attack back in the headlines, we take a closer look at Big Game Hunting this week on Talos Takes. Why do threat actors look at these massive targets, and what do they hope to get out of it? Is there anything smaller organizations can learn from these high-stakes campaigns?

Earlier this week, we released an in-depth blog post on fingerprint scanners used as physical security gates on devices. To save you a bit of time, and to summarize it for those non-technical folks out there, Nick Biasini and Jon Munshaw dedicate this episode to breaking down Talos’ research. What was the endgame of our research? And can you rely only on your fingerprint to keep your device secure?

Now that Cisco Incident Response has been a part of the Talos family for a few months now, we figured it was time to check back in with them. On this episode of Talos Takes, Brad Garnett from CTIR joins the show to talk about his organization’s new Cyber Range offering, part of the standard CTIR retainer. Brad discusses how a Cyber Range exercise can prepare your organization for the worst and how it helps dispel some myths around what happens during a cyber intrusion.

On this week’s episode, Edmund Brumaghin joins the show again to talk about a recent blog post on Salfram. This threat actor is spreading lots and lots of spam and using it to deliver a variety of malware. Here’s why this threat specifically caught our eye and how it’s evolving over time.

In this episode of Talos Takes, content manager Jon Munshaw sits down with researcher Joe Marshall to discuss the recently discovered EKANS/SNAKE malware. This is one of the first ransomware strains to specifically target ICS systems. And Joe, who has experiencing protecting the ICS space, discusses what’s unique about this family and what it means for the future of cyber security in the infrastructure field.

It’s been a while since we re-visited our Malware 101 series. So we’re going back to class to learn about information-stealers. Aliza Johnson from the Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team joins the show to talk about her recent research into and overview of infostealers. Although the name is pretty self-explanatory, this type of malware comes in many shapes and sizes for many purposes.

We go back to college this week with a Psychology 101 class. And today, we’re covering multi-factor authentication. Jon has Dave Lewis, one of Cisco Duo’s advisory CISOs, on the show to talk about the psychology behind using these apps and talking to users about implementing it across their environments. They discuss moving around the accept and reject buttons in the UI, how we communicate the benefits of MFA to administrators and the recent wave of brute-force attacks.

Paul Eubanks joins this week’s episode of Talos Takes to look at his recent blog post on de-anonymizing ransomware groups on the whispers dark web. Paul and his team recently used several tactics to unmask several threat actors and disclosure their tactics to stay hidden. Jon interviews Paul about ransomware actors’ usual operations on the dark web, the specific tools and tactics he used and the pros and cons of calling out actors for their opsec failures.

See people, this is what happens when you finally let a panda drive a sports car! This week’s episode of Talos Takes covers the basics of MustangPanda, a Chinese state-sponsored actor we wrote about recently. Asheer Maholtra joins the show to go over his research into this group. Mainly, we discuss why this actor, despite being aligned with China, is targeting Russian government entities and organizations. Though the two countries seem to be allies, all is fair in love and cyber espionage.

Continuing the “Kenna 101” series over at Talos Takes, Ed Bellis re-joins the show to talk about patching and mitigation strategies. So far, we’ve talked about how to tell when you should take a CVE seriously. But what if there’s no patch for it? Or what if you have to patch 50 vulnerabilities in the same product? We talk about how Kenna can help security teams of all sizes prioritize their patching strategies and create mitigation strategies in the worst-case scenario. For the other entries in our Kenna 101 series, listen here and here.

When most people think of the “Metaverse,” they may first think of the company Meta — the recently rebranded Facebook. After all, what other company would really want everyone taking meetings virtually using avatars while you share your cryptocurrency wallets and personal information with them? The Metaverse is actually much larger than this, though. So in this Talos Takes episode, we’re trying to demystify the Metaverse and look at what it is, exactly. Researcher Jaeson Schultz recaps his recent blog post on the matter, and then he and Jon talk about the potential security pitfalls that could arise from adopting the Metaverse.

In the latest entry in the “Days of our Ransomware” series, Azim Khodjibaev joins Jon to talk about some recent ransomware drama. Dark web forums have been going nuts since Russia arrested and charged several alleged members of the REvil ransomware gang in January. Azim discusses how there’s been a power grab since those arrests, and we discuss what else it might take to shut down many of these wide-reaching ransomware groups. Threat actors: They get into the same petty arguments we all do in Slack.

We had to give Brad a few minutes to take an Incident Response victory lap after his team received two major accolades over the past two weeks. But aside from that, it’s also a perfect time to have him on ahead of the holidays. The shopping season is always a favorite time for attackers, so it’s as good a time as any to make sure your incident response plan is polished and practiced. We also take some time to look back on what Incident Response lessons Brad learned in 2021.

Sorry for dropping two episodes in the feed in one day, but we also needed to find time to talk about the critical zero-day vulnerability in Apache HTTP Server. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to perform path traversal and eventually remote code execution. Patch for this one as soon as possible, and use the Snort rule we have available now.

We have another special extra large-sized version of Talos Takes this week. Enjoy this recording of a live stream we hosted earlier this week with Martin Lee from our Talos Communications team and Paul Lee from Cisco Talos Incident Response. The Lees discuss how to build the perfect Incident Response Plan. First, Martin walks through the basics of creating, editing and iterating on an IR plan. Then, he’s joined by Paul to ask him a few questions, take some Q&A from the audience and learn about Paul’s experience from the field.

Asheer Malhotra joins the show to once again cover a cyber attack in South Asia. This time, it’s an attacker that looks and smells like an APT, but may just be a run-of-the-mill crimeware gang. Asheer discusses he and his colleagues’ research into Operation: Armor Piercer, a campaign targeted at government agencies and military contractors. Needless to say, these are high-profile targets. Find out what this group wants and why they’re aping so much from other groups like Transparent Tribe and SideCopy.

Allow Vitor Ventura to take you on a journey of discovery, threat actors and attribution. He recently assisted with an investigation into a series of malware and spam campaigns using aviation-themed lures. These include fake flight itineraries, invoices and more. Vitor joins us on this week’s Talos Takes episode to discuss what he learned during this process, including how he connected the campaigns, what he learned (and couldn’t learn) about the actor behind them, and what he’ll take away into his next research. This is a great episode for anyone who is wondering about what kinds of pitfalls are out there for a security researcher.

Andrew Windsor from our malware research team joins the show for the first time to talk about Solarmarker. This is a campaign Andrew’s followed for a while that recently added new modules that make it particularly dangerous. The attackers behind Solarmarker could basically use this threat to drop whatever they want. At least for now, they’re sticking to information-stealing. But could it ever get worse than that?

Fresh off of translating an entire ransomware playbook from Russian to English, Azim and Dave from the Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team join Talos Takes to talk about this project. They provide some first-hand insights into what this leaked playbook tells us about the Conti ransomware-as-a-service group. Threat actors — they have feelings just like us!

This is a double special Talos Takes episode — it’s XL-sized and continues our Cybersecurity Awareness Month theme. This is a recording of our live stream from earlier this week with Brad Garnett, the general manager of Talos Incident Response. Even if you’ve never worked with an incident response team before, or have no idea what IR is, this is a perfect place to start. We provide the tl;dr of the IR process, talk building an IR plan and answer audience questions.

What’s a commodity RAT? And how does that make it different from your run-of-the-mill RAT? Is that RAT different than a trojan? In this week’s Talos Takes episode, we answer these questions and more to provide you a quick overview of remote access trojans/tools (aka RATs) and how commodity RATS specifically differ from their “normal” brethren. Asheer Malhotra from our Outreach team has been looking at several commodity RATs for months now and is here to take you to class for 10 minutes.

Jon and Nick sit down for a few minutes to talk about U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent Executive Order on more heavily regulating cryptocurrency. For a primer on this episode, you can read a quick overview here. This episode pretty much sums it up as being a good thing for anyone who uses cryptocurrency legitimately, and bad for anyone who uses crypto to do anything illegal. We discuss how greater regulation could affect ransomware operators who rely on virtual currency for ransom payments and illegitimate miners, and why no one using Bitcoin legitimately should be worried.

Continuing our “Kenna 101” series, Jon is joined this week by Jerry Gamblin, Kenna’s director of security research. Jerry is an expert at all things CVE’s, so we reflect on reading vulnerability reports and analyzing specific CVEs. We discuss if “severity” scores even really mean anything, and how to interpret a maximum 10/10 score versus an attacker vector or type of vulnerability.

The recently disclosed vulnerability in F5 BIG-IP took security Twitter by storm two weeks ago, and continues to make headlines now. It immediately prompted warnings from CISA and security researchers everywhere warning users to patch as soon as possible. Of course, it’s important to patch. But maybe we started panicking a little too early that this was going to be the next PrintNightmare. On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, Jon is joined by Jerry Gamblin from Kenna Security to talk about the ins and outs of this vulnerability and while it is serious, it’s incredibly unlikely that an attacker can or would exploit it in the wild.

People across the world are working from home now, and employers are increasingly turning to VPN services and Windows Remote Desktop Protocol to make sure their workers have access to their files. In this Talos Takes episode, we run down some common security concerns with these services and discuss what employees should do to stay safe while accessing their files online.

Threat actors all over the place are trying to capitalize on COVID-19. We recently discovered a campaign we’re calling “PoetRAT” using lure documents themed around the pandemic attempting to trick victims into downloading malware. In this week’s Talos Takes episode, Nick Biasini chats with one of the researchers on the project, Warren Mercer, about this threat.

The quick and dirty beginner’s guide to what Snort is and how to use. This the podcast accompaniment to the rest of our Snort 101 materials, which can be found on Snort.org/Resources.

This week’s Talos Takes episode is another malware deep dive. Edmund Brumaghin joins the show to talk about WastedLocker, a recent ransomware family he and some other Talos researchers reverse-engineered. Here’s everything you need to know about what makes this threat unique and how it uses LoLBins to survive.