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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

May 3, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Spotlight: Spin to Win…Malware

1 min read

This post was authored by Nick Biasini with contributions from Tom Schoellhammer and Emmanuel Tacheau The threat landscape is ever changing and adversaries are always working to find more efficient ways to compromise users. One of the many ways that users are driven to malicious content is through malicious advertisements known as malvertising. Talos has […]

May 2, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Cryptolocker 4 White Paper Available: The Evolution Continues

1 min read

We are pleased to announce the availability of the cryptolocker 4 white paper. Over the past year, Talos has devoted a significant amount of time to better understanding how ransomware operates, its relation to other malware, and its economic impact. This research has proven valuable for Talos and led the development of better detection methods […]

April 28, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Research Spotlight: The Resurgence of Qbot

1 min read

The post was authored by Ben Baker. Qbot, AKA Qakbot, has been around for since at least 2008, but it recently experienced a large surge in development and deployments. Qbot primarily targets sensitive information like banking credentials. Here we are unveiling recent changes to the malware that haven’t been made public yet. Qbot’s primary means […]

April 27, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

The “Wizzards” of Adware

1 min read

Talos posted a blog, September 2015, which aimed to identify how often seemingly benign software can be rightly condemned for being a piece of malware. With this in mind, this blog presents an interesting piece of “software” which we felt deserved additional information disclosure. This software exhibits several questionable behaviors including: Attempts to detect sandboxes […]

April 27, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Further NTPD Vulnerabilities

1 min read

As a member of the Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative, Cisco is contributing to the CII effort by evaluating the Network Time Protocol daemon (ntpd) for security defects. We previously identified a series of vulnerabilities in the Network Time Protocol daemon; through our continued research we have identified further vulnerabilities in the software. Read More>>

April 20, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Oracle OIT Image Export SDK libvs_pdf XRef Index Code Execution Vulnerability

1 min read

Talos has recently discovered a vulnerability in Oracle’s Outside In Technology  Image Export SDK which, when exploited, allows an attacker to overflow the heap, leading to arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability lies in the Image Export SDK’s parsing of Portable Document Format (PDF) files. While parsing a PDF file which contains an Xref object, values […]

April 20, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Spotlight: Exploit Kit Goes International Hits 150+ Countries

1 min read

This post authored by Nick Biasini Talos is constantly monitoring the threat landscape and exploit kits are a constantly evolving component of it. An ongoing goal of Talos is to expose and disrupt these kits to protect the average internet user being targeted and compromised. We were able to gain unprecedented insight into Angler exploit […]

April 15, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Widespread JBoss Backdoors a Major Threat

1 min read

With around 2100 servers affected, there are a lot of stories about how this happened. But a consistent thread in them all is the need to patch.

April 12, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – April 2016

1 min read

Patch Tuesday for April has arrived with Microsoft releasing their latest monthly set of security bulletins to address security vulnerabilities in their products. This month’s release contains 13 bulletins relating to 31 vulnerabilities. Six bulletins address vulnerabilities rated as critical in Edge, Graphic Components, Internet Explorer, XML Core Service, Microsoft Office and Adobe Flash Player. […]