Avatar

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

April 10, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

From Box to Backdoor: Discovering Just How Insecure an ICS Device is in Only 2 Weeks

This post was authored by Martin Lee and Warren Mercer, based on research conducted by Patrick DeSantis. Industrial Control Systems provide stability to civilization. They clean our water, deliver our power, and enable the physical infrastructure that we have learnt to rely on. Industrial Control Sy…

April 7, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for Mar 31 – Apr 7

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between March 31 and April 7. 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…

April 6, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Hacking the Belkin E Series OmniView 2-Port KVM Switch

Author: Ian Payton, Security Advisory EMEAR Introduction Too frequently security professionals only consider software vulnerabilities when considering the risks of connecting devices to their networks and systems. When it comes to considering potential risks of connected devices and the Internet of…

April 3, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Introducing ROKRAT

This blog was authored by Warren Mercer and Paul Rascagneres with contributions from Matthew Molyett. Executive Summary A few weeks ago, Talos published research on a Korean MalDoc. As we previously discussed this actor is quick to cover their tracks and very quickly cleaned up their compromised hos…

March 31, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Round-up for Mar 24 – Mar 31

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…

March 31, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Spotlight: Sundown Matures

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 ac…

March 27, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

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

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 backgr…

March 24, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

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

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 characteri…

March 23, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

How Malformed RTF Defeats Security Engines

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 i…