spam

May 3, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Angler Catches Victims Using Phish as Bait

1 min read

This post authored by Nick Biasini with contributions from Erick Galinkin. Exploit kits have been a recurring threat that we’ve discussed here on this blog as a method of driving users to maliciousness.  Users typically encounter exploit kit landing pages through  compromised websites and malvertising. However, we’ve found a new email twist to the standard […]

July 8, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Ding! Your RAT has been delivered

7 min read

This post was authored by Nick Biasini Talos is constantly observing malicious spam campaigns delivering various different types of payloads. Common payloads include things like Dridex, Upatre, and various versions of Ransomware. One less common payload that Talos analyzes periodically are Remote Access Trojans or RATs. A recently observed spam campaign was using freeware remote […]

June 24, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Hook, Line & Sinker: Catching Unsuspecting Users Off Guard

4 min read

This post was authored by Earl Carter. Attackers are constantly looking for ways to monetize their malicious activity. In many instances this involves targeting user data and accounts. Talos continues to see phishing attacks targeting customers of multiple high profile financial institutions.  In the past couple of months, we have observed phishing attacks against various […]

June 5, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

My Resume Protects All Your Files

4 min read

This post was authored by Nick Biasini Talos has found a new SPAM campaign that is using multiple layers of obfuscation to attempt to evade detection.  Spammers are always evolving to get their messages to the end users by bypassing SPAM filters while still appearing convincing enough to get a user to complete the actions required […]

May 20, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Little Links, Big Headaches

4 min read

This post was authored by Earl Carter & Jaeson Schultz. Talos is always fascinated by the endless creativity of those who send spam. Miscreants who automate sending spam using botnets are of particular interest. Talos has been tracking a spam botnet that over the past several months that has been spamming weight loss products, male erectile […]

February 5, 2015

SECURITY

Be More Effective, Be More Efficient: The Mantra for Many Adversaries in 2014

2 min read

Adversaries are committed to continually refining or developing new techniques to conceal malicious activity, decrease their reliance on other techniques that may be more detectable, and become increasingly more efficient and effective in their attacks. Below are just three examples—explored in detail in the newly released Cisco 2015 Annual Security Report—of how malicious actors met […]

January 21, 2015

SECURITY

Engaging All Layers of Defense: Incident Response in Action

4 min read

The Cisco 2015 Annual Security Report highlights many creative techniques that attackers are exploiting to conceal malicious activity, often taking advantage of gaps in security programs. They are continually refining and developing new techniques to gain a foothold in environments and, increasingly, they are relying on users and IT teams as enablers of attacks to […]

December 9, 2014

THREAT RESEARCH

Dridex Is Back, then it’s gone again

2 min read

This post was authored by Armin Pelkmann and Earl Carter. Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group noticed a reappearance of several Dridex email campaigns, starting last week and continuing into this week as well. Dridex is in a nutshell, malware designed to steal your financial account information. The attack attempts to get the user to install the […]

September 17, 2014

THREAT RESEARCH

Help! My IP Address Has Been Hijacked!

5 min read

SpamCop is a free, community-based spam email reporting service provided by Cisco. SpamCop analyzes reported spam, and extracts details about the sending IP, the URLs contained in the spam, and the networks over which the spam message has transited. This information is used to create the SpamCop Block List (SCBL). The SCBL a list of […]