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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

March 31, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for Mar 24 – Mar 31

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between March 24 and March 31. 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 […]

March 31, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Spotlight: Sundown Matures

1 min read

This post authored by Nick Biasini with contributions from Edmund Brumaghin and Alex Chiu The last time Talos discussed Sundown it was an exploit kit in transition. Several of the large exploit kits had left the landscape and a couple of strong contenders remain. Sundown was one of the kits still active and poised to […]

March 27, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Certificate Validation Flaw in Apple macOS and iOS Identified and Patched

1 min read

Most people don’t give much thought to what happens when you connect to your bank’s website or log in to your email account. For most people, securely connecting to a website seems as simple as checking to make sure the little padlock in the address bar is present. However, in the background there are many […]

March 24, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for the Week of Mar 20 – Mar 24

1 min read

Talos is publishing a summary glimpse into the most prevalent threats observed over the past week.

March 23, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

How Malformed RTF Defeats Security Engines

1 min read

This post is authored by Paul Rascagneres with contributions from Alex McDonnell Executive Summary Talos has discovered a new spam campaign used to infect targets with the well known  Loki Bot stealer. The infection vector is an RTF document abusing an old exploit (CVE-2012-1856), however the most interesting part is the effort put into the […]

March 22, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Code Execution Vulnerability in LabVIEW

1 min read

Overview LabVIEW is a system design and development platform released by National Instruments. The software is widely used to create applications for data acquisition, instrument control and industrial automation. Talos is disclosing the presence of a code execution vulnerability and a memory corruption vulnerability which can be triggered by opening specially crafted VI files, the […]

March 20, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Necurs Diversifies Its Portfolio

1 min read

The post was authored by Sean Baird, Edmund Brumaghin and Earl Carter, with contributions from Jaeson Schultz. Executive Summary The Necurs botnet is the largest spam botnet in the world. Over the past year it has been used primarily for the distribution of Locky ransomware and Dridex. Earlier this year, we wrote about how the […]

March 17, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for the Week of Mar 13 – Mar 17

1 min read

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed over the past week. 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 protected from […]

March 14, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – March 2017

1 min read

Following a sparse February patch Tuesday, today’s March release brings a bumper crop of fixed vulnerabilities: 17 bulletins covering 140 different vulnerabilities, 47 of which are rated as critical. The critical vulnerabilities affect Internet Explorer, Edge, Hyper-V, Windows PDF Library, Microsoft SMB Server, Uniscribe, Microsoft Graphics Component, Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Windows. 92 vulnerabilities […]