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

Malware Word Search: Identifying Angler’s Dictionary

1 min read

This post authored by Steve Poulson with contributions from Nick Biasini. Exploit kits are constantly evolving and changing. We recently wrote about some subtle Angler changes but then Angler changed drastically on March 8. In this blog post, we will briefly cover these changes, examining different characteristics of the URL structure for Angler and the […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – March 2016

1 min read

Patch Tuesday for March 2016 has arrived. Today, Microsoft has released their monthly set of security bulletins designed to address security vulnerabilities within their products. This month’s release contains 13 bulletins addressing 44 vulnerabilities. Five bulletins are rated critical and address vulnerabilities in Edge, Graphic Fonts, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Window PDF. The […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Angler Attempts to Slip the Hook

1 min read

This post was authored by Nick Biasini with contributions from Joel Esler and Melissa Taylor Talos has discussed at length the sophistication of the Angler exploit kit. One thing that always makes Angler stand apart is the speed with which they develop and implement new techniques. Whether its domain shadowing, 302 cushioning, encrypted payloads, or […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Tax Scams Gone International

1 min read

Tax time in the US is quickly approaching. Everyone should be on the lookout for scams that are designed to trick you out of your money and personal information. The IRS is warning users about an increase in the number of email scams being used this year. However, these attacks are no longer limited to […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Operation Blockbuster: Coverage for the Lazarus Group

1 min read

The threat landscape is in constant flux. In many situations, the entire security community must work together to combat some of today’s larger threats. Novetta researched a group of malware families that all appear to be related to the same group of threat actors dubbed “The Lazarus Group” (Group 77).According to Novetta’s analysis, which was […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – February 2016

1 min read

Today, Microsoft has released their monthly set of security bulletins designed to address security vulnerabilities within their products. This month’s release contains twelve bulletins addressing 37 vulnerabilities. Five bulletins are rated critical and address vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Edge, Windows Journal, Office and Windows PDF. The remaining seven bulletins are rated important and address vulnerabilities […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Bedep Lurking in Angler’s Shadows

1 min read

This post is authored by Nick Biasini. In October 2015, Talos released our detailed investigation of the Angler Exploit Kit which outlined the infrastructure and monetary impact of an exploit kit campaign delivering ransomware. During the investigation we found that two thirds of Angler’s payloads were some variation of ransomware and noted one of the […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

The Internet of Things Is Not Always So Comforting

1 min read

Over the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as reality with the advent of smart refrigerators, smart HVAC systems, smart TVs, and more. Embedding internet-enabled devices into everything presents new opportunities in connecting these systems to each other, making them “smarter,” and making our lives more convenient than ever before. Despite […]

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Group

Vulnerability Spotlight: Libgraphite Font Processing Vulnerabilities

1 min read

Vulnerabilities Discovered by Yves Younan of Cisco Talos. Talos is releasing an advisory for four vulnerabilities that have been found within the Libgraphite library, which is used for font processing in Linux, Firefox, LibreOffice, and other major applications. The most severe vulnerability results from an out-of-bounds read which the attacker can use to achieve arbitrary […]