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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

September 28, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup Sept 21 – 28

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Sept. 21 and 28. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highl…

September 26, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

VPNFilter III: More Tools for the Swiss Army Knife of Malware

Summary VPNFilter — a multi-stage, modular framework that has infected hundreds of thousands of network devices across the globe — is now known to possess even greater capabilities. Cisco Talos recently discovered seven additional third-stage VPNFilter modules that add significant functionality to t…

September 25, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Epee Levin Packet Deserialization Code Execution Vulnerability

This vulnerability was discovered by Lilith (>_>) of Cisco Talos. Overview The Epee library, which is leveraged by a large number of cryptocurrencies, contains an exploitable code execution vulnerability in the Levin deserialization functionality. An attacker can send a specially crafted netwo…

September 25, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

IDA-minsc Wins Second Place in Hex-Rays Plugins Contest

Ali Rizvi-Santiago of Cisco Talos recently tied second place in the IDA plugin contest with a plugin named “IDA-minsc.” IDA is a multi-processor disassembler and debugger created by the company Hex-Rays and this year there were a total of 4 winners with 9 submissions total. Every year, t…

September 24, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

Adwind Dodges AV via DDE

This blog post is authored by Paul Rascagneres, Vitor Ventura and with the contribution of Tomislav Pericin and Robert Perica from ReversingLabs. Introduction Cisco Talos, along with fellow cybersecurity firm ReversingLabs, recently discovered a new spam campaign that is spreading the Adwind 3.0 rem…

September 22, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup for Sept 14 – 21

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Sept. 14 and 21. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highl…

September 19, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

Cyber Threat Alliance Releases Cryptomining Whitepaper

Despite the recent devaluation of some cryptocurrencies, illicit cryptocurrency miners remain a lucrative and widespread attack vector in the threat landscape. These miners are easy to deploy, and attackers see it as a quick way to steal other users’ processing power to generate cryptocurrency…

September 14, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup for September 7 to September 14

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between September 7 and September 14. 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 b…

September 13, 2018

THREAT RESEARCH

SigAnalyzer: Signature analysis with CASC

Executive summary ClamAV Signature Creator (CASC) is an IDA Pro plugin that assists in the creation of ClamAV pattern signatures. We have enhanced this plugin to also analyze these signatures. The plugin highlights matching parts in a binary when its given a particular signature. This function is he…