Avatar

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

August 18, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for Aug 11 – Aug 18

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between August 11 and August 18. As with previous round-ups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically […]

August 15, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Booters with Chinese Characteristics: The Rise of Chinese Online DDoS Platforms

1 min read

This post was authored by Dave Liebenberg In the past few months, Talos has observed an uptick in the number of Chinese websites offering online DDoS services. Many of these websites have a nearly identical layout and design, offering a simple interface in which the user selects a target’s host, port, attack method, and duration […]

August 14, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

When combining exploits for added effect goes wrong

1 min read

Since public disclosure in April 2017, CVE-2017-0199 has been frequently used within malicious Office documents. The vulnerability allows attackers to include Ole2Link objects within RTF documents to launch remote code when HTA applications are opened and parsed by Microsoft Word. In this recent campaign, attackers combined CVE-2017-0199 exploitation with an earlier exploit, CVE-2012-0158, possibly in […]

August 9, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

WinDBG and JavaScript Analysis

1 min read

This blog was authored by Paul Rascagneres. Introduction JavaScript is frequently used by malware authors to execute malicious code on Windows systems because it is powerful, natively available and rarely disabled. Our previous article on .NET analysis generated much interest relating to how to use WinDBG to analyse .js files. In this post we extend our description of […]

August 8, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – August 2017

1 min read

Microsoft has released its monthly set of security advisories for vulnerabilities that have been identified and addressed in various products. This month’s advisory release addresses 48 new vulnerabilities with 25 of them rated critical, 21 rated important, and 2 rated moderate. These vulnerabilities impact Edge, Hyper-V, Internet Explorer, Remote Desktop Protocol, Sharepoint, SQL Server, the […]

August 8, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Adobe Reader DC Parser Confusion

1 min read

Parser vulnerabilities in common software packages such as Adobe Acrobat Reader pose a significant security risk to large portions of the internet. The fact that these software packages typically have a large footprints often gives attackers a broad attack surface they can potentially leverage for malicious purposes. Thus, identifying vulnerabilities and responsibly disclosing them is […]

August 7, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

On Conveying Doubt

1 min read

Typically, Talos has the luxury of time when conducting research. We can carefully draft a report that clearly lays out the evidence and leads the reader to a clear understanding of our well supported findings. A great deal of time is spent ensuring that the correct words and logical paths are used so that we […]

August 4, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for July 28 – August 4

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between July 28 and August 04. As with previous round-ups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically […]

August 4, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Kakadu SDK Vulnerabilities

1 min read

Vulnerabilities discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic and Tyler Bohan of Cisco Talos. Today, Talos is disclosing multiple vulnerabilities that have been identified in the Kakadu JPEG 2000 SDK. The vulnerabilities manifest in a way that could be exploited if a user opens a specifically crafted JPEG 2000 file. Talos has coordinated with Kakadu to ensure relevant […]