Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

The Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group (Talos) is made up of leading threat researchers supported by sophisticated systems to create threat intelligence for Cisco products that detects, analyzes and protects against both known and emerging threats. Talos maintains the official rule sets of Snort.org, ClamAV, SenderBase.org and SpamCop. This blog profile is managed by multiple authors with expertise that spans software development, reverse engineering, vulnerability triage, malware investigation and intelligence gathering.

Talos is the primary team that contributes threat information to the Cisco Collective Security Intelligence (CSI) ecosystem. Cisco CSI is shared across multiple security solutions and provides industry-leading security protections and efficacy. In addition to threat researchers, CSI is driven by intelligence infrastructure, product and service telemetry, public and private feeds and the open source community.

Articles

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

DoNot’s Firestarter abuses Google Firebase Cloud Messaging to spread

1 min read

The newly discovered Firestarter malware uses Google Firebase Cloud Messaging to notify its authors of the final payload location. Even if the command and control (C2) is taken down, the DoNot team can still redirect the malware to another C2 using Google infrastructure. The approach in the final payload upload denotes a highly personalized targeting […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Threat Roundup for October 16 to October 23

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between October 16 and October 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, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Dynamic Data Resolver – Version 1.0.1 beta

1 min read

Cisco Talos is releasing a new beta version of Dynamic Data Resolver (DDR) today. This release comes with a new architecture for samples using multi-threading. The process and thread tracing has been completely reimplemented. We also fixed a few bugs and memory leaks. Another new feature is that the DDR backend now comes in two […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Threat Roundup for October 9 to October 16

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between October 9 and October 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, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Threat Roundup for October 2 to October 9

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between September 25 and October 2. 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, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are […]

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Talos Group

90 days, 16 bugs, and an Azure Sphere Challenge

1 min read

Cisco Talos reports 16 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure Sphere’s sponsored research challenge. By Claudio Bozzato and Lilith [-_-]; and Dave McDaniel. On May 15, 2020, Microsoft kicked off the Azure Sphere Security Research Challenge, a three-month initiative aimed at finding bugs in Azure Sphere. Among the teams and individuals selected, Cisco Talos conducted a […]

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Talos Group

PoetRAT: Malware targeting public and private sector in Azerbaijan evolves

1 min read

Cisco Talos discovered PoetRAT earlier this year. We have continued to monitor this actor and their behavior over the preceding months. We have observed multiple new campaigns indicating a change in the actor’s capabilities and showing their maturity toward better operational security. We assess with medium confidence this actor continues to use spear-phishing attacks to […]

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Talos Group

Lemon Duck brings cryptocurrency miners back into the spotlight

1 min read

Attackers are constantly reinventing ways of monetizing their tools. Cisco Talos recently discovered a complex campaign employing a multi-modular botnet with multiple ways to spread. This threat, known as “Lemon Duck,” has a cryptocurrency mining payload that steals computer resources to mine the Monero virtual currency. The actor employs various methods to spread across the […]

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Talos Group

Threat Roundup for September 25 to October 2

1 min read