Talos

September 15, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

When Does Software Start Becoming Malware?

This post was authored by Earl Carter, Alex Chiu, Joel Esler, Geoff Serrao, and Brandon Stultz. Defining what is malware relies on determining when undesirable behavior crosses the line from benign to clearly unwanted. The lack of a single standard regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavi…

September 8, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Vulnerability Spotlight: Microsoft Windows CDD Font Parsing Kernel Memory Corruption

Discovered by Andrea Allievi and Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos.   Talos, in conjunction with Microsoft’s security advisory issued on September 8th, is disclosing the discovery of a memory corruption vulnerability within the Microsoft Windows CDD Font Parsing Kernel Driver. This vulnerability was i…

September 8, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – September 2015

Today, Microsoft has released their monthly set of security bulletins designed to address security vulnerabilities within their products. This month’s release sees a total of 12 bulletins released which address 55 CVEs. Five bulletins are rated “Critical” this month and address vulnerabi…

August 25, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Malware Meets SysAdmin – Automation Tools Gone Bad

This post was authored by Alex Chiu and Xabier Ugarte Pedrero. Talos recently spotted a targeted phishing attack with several unique characteristics that are not normally seen. While we monitor phishing campaigns used to distribute threats such as Dridex, Upatre, and Cryptowall, targeted phishing at…

August 18, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Microsoft Internet Explorer Out of Band Advisory

Today an out of band advisory was released by Microsoft to address CVE-2015-2502. This vulnerability is addressed by MS15-093. MS15-093 address a memory corruption vulnerability in Internet Explorer versions 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. This affects all currently supported versions of Windows, including Wi…

August 13, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Talos Identifies Multiple Memory Corruption Issues in Quicktime

Update 2015-08-21: This post has been updated to reflect an additional advisory released on August 20. Talos, in conjunction with Apple’s security advisories issued on August 13 and August 20, has released six advisories for vulnerabilities that Talos found in Apple Quicktime. In accordance with our…

August 11, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – August 2015

Microsoft has released their monthly set of security bulletins designed to address security vulnerabilities within their products. This month’s release sees a total of 14 bulletins released which address 58 CVEs. Four bulletins are rated “Critical” this month and address vulnerabilities…

August 8, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Research Spotlight: Detecting Algorithmically Generated Domains

This post was authored by Mahdi Namazifar and Yuxi Pan Once a piece of malware has been successfully installed on a vulnerable system one of the first orders of business is for the malware to reach out to the remote command-and-control (C&C) servers in order to receive further instructions, upda…

July 31, 2015

THREAT RESEARCH

Your Files Are Encrypted with a “Windows 10 Upgrade”

This post was authored by Nick Biasini with contributions from Craig Williams & Alex Chiu Update 8/1: To see a video of this threat in action click here Adversaries are always trying to take advantage of current events to lure users into executing their malicious payload. These campaigns are usu…