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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 20, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup for September 13 to September 20

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Sep. 13 to Sep 20. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral ch…

September 17, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Emotet is back after a summer break

This blog post was written by Colin Grady, William Largent, and Jaeson Schultz. Emotet is still evolving, five years after its debut as a banking trojan. It is one of the world’s most dangerous botnets and malware droppers-for-hire. The malware payloads dropped by Emotet serve to more fully mo…

September 17, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Cryptocurrency miners aren’t dead yet: Documenting the voracious but simple “Panda”

By Christopher Evans and David Liebenberg. Executive summary A new threat actor named “Panda” has generated thousands of dollars worth of the Monero cryptocurrency through the use of remote access tools (RATs) and illicit cryptocurrency-mining malware. This is far from the most sophisticated actor w…

September 13, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup for September 6 to September 13

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Sep. 6. to Sep 13. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral ch…

September 11, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Watchbog and the Importance of Patching

By Luke DuCharme and Paul Lee. What Happened? Cisco Incident Response (CSIRS) recently responded to an incident involving the Watchbog cryptomining botnet. The attackers were able to exploit CVE-2018-1000861 to gain a foothold and install the Watchbog malware on the affected systems. This Linux-base…

September 6, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup for August 30 to September 6

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Aug. 30 and Sep. 6. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral c…

September 5, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

GhIDA: Ghidra decompiler for IDA Pro

Cisco Talos is releasing two new tools for IDA Pro: GhIDA and Ghidraaas. GhIDA is an IDA Pro plugin that integrates the Ghidra decompiler in the IDA workflow, giving users the ability to rename and highlight symbols and improved navigation and comments. GhIDA assists the reverse-engineering process…

September 3, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

The latest on BlueKeep and DejaBlue vulnerabilities — Using Firepower to defend against encrypted DejaBlue

Over the past few months, Microsoft has released several security updates for critical Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)-related security bugs. These bugs are significant for IT infrastructure because they are classified as “wormable,” meaning future malware that exploits them could spread f…

August 30, 2019

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Roundup for August 23 to August 30

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between Aug. 23 and Aug. 30. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral…