spam

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…

January 18, 2017

THREAT RESEARCH

Without Necurs, Locky Struggles

This post authored by Nick Biasini with contributions from Jaeson Schultz Locky has been a devastating force for the last year in the spam and ransomware landscape. The Locky variant of ransomware has been responsible for huge amounts of spam messages being sent on a daily basis. The main driver beh…

December 19, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

In the Eye of the Hailstorm

This blog post was authored by Jakob Dohrmann, David Rodriguez, and Jaeson Schultz. The Cisco Talos and Umbrella research teams are deploying a distributed hailstorm detection system which brings together machine learning, stream processing of DNS requests and the curated Talos email corpus. Talos h…

November 22, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Fareit Spam: Rocking Out to a New File Type

This post authored by Nick Biasini Talos is constantly monitoring the threat landscape including the email threat landscape. Lately this landscape has been dominated with Locky distribution. During a recent Locky vacation Talos noticed an interesting shift in file types being used to distribute anot…

June 30, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Gotta be SWIFT for this Spam Campaign!

Talos have observed a large uptick in the Zepto ransomware and have identified a method of distribution for the Zepto ransomware, Spam Email. Locky/Zepto continue to be well known ransomware variants and as such we will focus on the spam email campaign. We found 137,731 emails in the last 4 days usi…

May 3, 2016

THREAT RESEARCH

Angler Catches Victims Using Phish as Bait

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 malv…

July 8, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Ding! Your RAT has been delivered

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 Ac…

June 24, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Hook, Line & Sinker: Catching Unsuspecting Users Off Guard

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 th…

June 5, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

My Resume Protects All Your Files

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…