malware

September 22, 2014

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Spotlight: “Kyle and Stan” Malvertising Network 9 Times Larger Than Expected

This post was authored by Armin Pelkmann. On September 8th, Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group unveiled the existence of the “Kyle and Stan” Malvertisement Network. The network was responsible for placing malicious advertisements on big websites like amazon.co…

September 8, 2014

THREAT RESEARCH

Threat Spotlight: “Kyle and Stan” Malvertising Network Threatens Windows and Mac Users With Mutating Malware

This post was authored by Shaun Hurley, David McDaniel and Armin Pelkmann. Update 2014-09-22: Updates on this threat can be found here Have you visited amazon.com, ads.yahoo.com, www.winrar.com, youtube.com, or any of the 74 domains listed below lately? If the answer is yes, then you may have been a…

August 26, 2014

SECURITY

The increasing prevalence and complexity of malware

In recent months, many organizations are becoming more interested in the information security landscape and how these threats can affect their business today. In the recent Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report, the results showed that 90% of select customer networks were found issuing DNS queries to d…

August 13, 2014

SECURITY

Putting a Damper on ‘Lateral Movement’ due to Cyber-Intrusion

Analysis of high-profile cyber breaches often reveals how intruders gain their initial footprint in the targeted organizations and bypass perimeter defenses to establish a backdoor for persistent activities. Such stealthy activities may continue until intruders complete their ultimate mission—claimi…

August 12, 2014

SECURITY

Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report: Exploit Kit Creators Vying for ‘Market Leader’ Role

Even in the world of cybercrime, when a top “vendor” drops out of the market, competitors will scurry to fill the void with their own products. As reported in the Cisco 2014 Midyear Security Report, when Paunch—the alleged creator and distributor of the Blackhole exploit kit—was arrested…

July 24, 2014

SECURITY

Securing Mobile Data: What’s Your Plan?

As a business or technical leader, you know you need to protect your company in a rapidly evolving mobile ecosystem. However, threats are not always obvious. As malware and attacks become more sophisticated over time, business decision makers must work with technical decision makers to navigate secu…

July 21, 2014

SECURITY

Old and Persistent Malware

Malware can find its way into the most unexpected of places. Certainly, no website can be assumed to be always completely free of malware. Typically, there are many ways that websites can be compromised to serve malware:…

July 8, 2014

SECURITY

Threat Spotlight: “A String of Paerls”, Part 2, Deep Dive

This post has been coauthored by Joel Esler, Craig Williams, Richard Harman, Jaeson Schultz, and Douglas Goddard  In part one of our two part blog series on the “String of Paerls” threat, we showed an attack involving a spearphish message containing an attached malicious Word doc. We also described…

July 8, 2014

SECURITY

The Expanding Burden of Security

[ed. Note: This post was updated 7/9/2014 to include new information not available to the author at the time of original publishing] I just returned from the Gartner Security Summit at the Gaylord Resort in National Harbor Maryland. Each morning I took my run along the Potomac River and passed this…