Talos Takes

Get ready for Cisco Live next week in Vegas with a quick primer on everything Talos has going on at the conference. We’re excited to be back in person interacting with customers and users. Jon has a complete rundown of the Talos space at the conference, some talk highlights and other things you should know before you go. For a complete agenda, check out the Cisco Live Session Catalog.

We’re doing something a bit different this week — it’s just Jon for a few minutes talking about Talos’ plans at the RSA Conference coming up next week. Catch up on our plans for the week and here about some special events we have planned. To stay up-to-date on the latest, follow us on Twitter. And if you prefer a written preview, read this week’s Threat Source newsletter.

Kendall McKay joins Jon this week to discuss the Hive and Conti ransomware chats she and her colleagues recently reviewed. We obtained some leaked chats between these ransomware groups and some of their victims, showing us what communicating with an attacker is really like. Jon and Kendall discuss the negotiation process over a ransom payment and what else we learned from these chat logs.

On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, we’re bringing you the recording of last week’s live stream with Cisco Talos Incident Response. Beers with Talos’ own Liz Waddell hosted the first in our new “On Air” series with CTIR, where she and her fellow Talosians recapped the previous quarter’s top threats. They run through the malware families CTIR saw most in the field and discussed other trends that threat actors are starting to adapt.

It’s tax season! You know what that means — sadness, frustration and scams. Host Jon Munshaw sat down with Nick Biasini from the Talos Outreach team to talk about common tactics adversaries use around this “holiday” to try and spread malware, steal personal information and take users’ money. We talk about free security tools you can deploy to block these types of threats, common spam tactics to keep an eye out for and other services that can help you prepare for a worst-case scenario.

Cisco Talos threat intelligence team and Cisco ThousandEyes went live on Talos’ social media platforms Friday to provide guidance on current cyberattacks and insight into internet activity in Ukraine. Both teams are actively monitoring the digital landscape and openly sharing essential findings to contribute to the safety of our customers globally.Many of our teams have set aside normal tasks, now spending their time watching over Ukrainian networks. Other teams have focused on protecting refugees, physically and digitally. Still, others have volunteered their free time contributing critical components to our open-source intelligence work. The audio version of this briefing will share what we have seen and how you can protect your data, network and teams.

Jon Munshaw and Nick Biasini sit down for a few minutes to discuss the latest on the ongoing cyber attacks and security concerns in Ukraine. They discuss how a recent set of attacks against government-run websites compares to past attacks like NotPetya, and provide guidance for any companies who may be based in, or do business in, Ukraine. For more of Talos’ insight on this, please continue to check back on our blog post here.

We thought it was usually all about “New year, new me,” heading into 2022, but turns out it’s the same cybersecurity problems. Join host Jon Munshaw as he welcomes on threat researcher JJ Cummings to discuss how the Log4j vulnerability event evolved over the holiday break. JJ, who you may recognized from our recent live Beers with Talos episode, discusses the new CVE that popped up the week after Christmas, and then discusses what things he and his team will be looking into regarding Log4shell in 2022.

This is a special XL edition of Talos Takes that is a replay of a live stream our amazing researchers put on earlier this week. You’ll hear Matt Olney, Amy Henderson and Vitor Ventura, all from Talos, talk about the Log4J vulnerability that is ruining the internet for everyone right now. They discussed the latest news around the vulnerability, provided advice to users who may be affected (i.e., pretty much everyone) and looked at where we go from here. If you’d like to hear more from us, you can join us LIVE on all of our social media platforms at noon ET on Friday, Dec. 17 for a special episode of Beers with Talos, where we’ll have more updates on Log4J.

Emotet was about a month late for Halloween, because it’s got its zombie costume on. The long-known botnet is showing some signs of life in late 2021 after an international law enforcement takedown earlier this year. Nick Biasini joins Talos Takes this week to discuss what signs we’re seeing to indicate Emotet’s return, and provides some advice as to what we should look out for as we head into 2022.

We know, we know. We do one of these every year. But people still falling for scams, so we still have to keep reminding people how to shop safely online! This year is a bit different than past Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays because of the issues around the supply chain. Attackers are sure to try to convince you that the big gift you want this year won’t arrive on time so you have to “ACT NOW!” Plus, there’s the continued frenzy to find PlayStation 5s and XBOX Series X/S’s. Jon and Nick talk about scams you’re likely to see while shopping online over the long weekend and provide some helpful tips that anyone can use.

For the first time in Talos Takes’ history, we have a formal crossover with Beers with Talos. Mitch Neff, the host of BWT, joins the show to talk about his horror stories using public WiFi networks. He and Jon discuss the safest ways to interact with large, public network in places like libraries, parks and airports, and potential alternatives to public hotspots.

Jon took a break from listening to “Red (Taylor’s Version)” to turn this podcast around quickly to align with our recent research on the Kimsuky APT. This North Korean state-sponsored actor is in the wild again targeting South Korean organizations that house potentially sensitive information. The group set up fake Blogger sites to lure in the victims to read about news related to nuclear disarmament and relations on the Korean peninsula, but instead were hit with infostealing malware. Assheer Malhotra, who helped research and write our latest blog, joins the show to discuss this group’s motivations, what information they may have been looking for, and how Talos helped put a stop to their actions.

We continue our special series for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month by addressing everyone’s worst nightmare: phish. Who among us hasn’t gotten the call, “We’re trying to reach out about your car’s extended warranty?” In this Talos Takes, Jaeson Schultz, Talos’ foremost spam and phish expert, breaks down spam emails, phone calls and messages for any user. We discuss new trends we’re seeing from attackers in 2021, talk about the best software solutions available and give advice to Jon’s 77-year-old grandmother.

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!

“Proxyware” sounds like a complicated topic that you’re too afraid to ask about. But really, it’s just software that allows users to sell off a portion of their internet bandwidth for a small profit. Problem is, attackers are swooping in on this popular software to spread malware and steal users’ money. Edmund Brumaghin joins the show this week to discuss his recent research into proxyware applications and how malware is hiding in plain sight. Edmund discusses why these types of apps are potentially unwanted applications, and what the threat is for enterprise users with remote workers, as well as personal PC users.

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.

Jon doesn’t have any children. So he found someone who does — Beers with Talos’ own Craig Williams — to talk about remote learning. Children are back to school, and many of them are doing so online. Craig and Jon talk about DNS filters, parental controls, meeting passwords and more that are sure to help parents and teachers adjust to this new normal.

We’ve got another special XL episode this week, this time about Snort 3. This roundtable covers everything you could know about Snort 3’s life, going back as far as its inception in the early 2010s. We even went out of our way to get Marty Roesch, the creator of Snort.Marty, along with our other panelists, discusses the origins of Snort 3, what benefits you can gain by upgrading and what other features you can expect to see in the future.

We know we just talked about supply chain attacks and SolarWinds last week, but it’s still all anyone in security is talking about. Joe Marshall joins the show this time to approach the SolarWinds breach from an internet-of-things and operational security perspective. He recently co-wrote a blog for Cisco detailing how outsourcing OT over the past few years has made the SolarWinds compromise worse. Joe, a lifelong researcher and security practitioner in the OT and infrastructure space, discusses what we still don’t know about this attack, what you should do if you think you may be affected, and how we can learn from this going forward. For more on Talos’ coverage and defense against the SolarWinds campaign, check out our blog post here.

Welcome to the unofficial incident response week at Talos! As part of the RSA Conference, we’ve released two new case studies detailing some malware cases Cisco Talos Incident Response helped resolve. Brad Garnett, this week’s guest, also released a new blog post where he wrote about why incident response is “the ultimate team sport.” Brad joins host Jon Munshaw this week to take a deeper dive into one of these engagements, in which an attacker tried to use Cobalt Strike to infect a target with ransomware (hint: this would have been really bad!) Brad talks about how the strong personal relationships CTIR built with the customer in question set everyone up for success.

How much is ransomware-as-a-service like a McDonald’s franchise? More similar than you’d think! The RaaS model has entered the mainstream over the past few months with groups such as DarkSide attacking the Colonial Pipeline.In these transactions, what’s in it for the original ransomware creator? And what do the operators themselves get out of it? Nick Biasini joins Jon Munshaw this week to talk about this business model, what it means for the rise in ransomware attacks, and how you can stay protected.

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.