Talos Threat Source is a regular intelligence update from Cisco Talos, highlighting the biggest threats each week and other security news.
Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week.
If you were at Black Hat but missed out on the live Beers with Talos podcast, we have you covered. We just released the recording of the episode, which features a special guest from CyberWire, a Baltimore-based cybersecurity news service. We let the audience choose the topics, and talked about everything from VPNFilter to Matt Olney’s belts.
Finally, we also have our weekly Threat Roundup, which you can find on the blog every Friday afternoon. There, we go over the most prominent threats we’ve seen (and blocked) over the past week.
If you want to see one of our researchers out and about, be sure to check below for upcoming public engagements where they will represent Talos.
Location: CactusCon, Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona
Synopsis: The rise of ransomware has paralleled a rise in the value of cryptocurrencies. The two are not necessarily connected, but the impact has been. From an adversary's perspective, there are two primary ways of getting these currencies: ransom payouts or mining. Cryptocurrency mining has been around as long as cryptocurrency, and it's always been a trade-off. Can you earn enough currency to offset the electricity and hardware costs? Well, imagine if you didn't have to worry about either of them. This talk will provide a deep dive into pool mining, and how it is being leveraged by attackers.
Location: Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Synopsis: Paul and Warren are hosting a joint talk on the Olympic Destroyer malware from earlier this year, and will cover why it is so difficult to attribute the attack. Vanja will also be hosting a workshop on manual kernel mode malware analysis.
Location: Texas Cyber Summit at Wyndham River Walk Hotel in San Antonio, Texas
Synopsis: Wiper malware has been leveraged by attackers for years to facilitate the destruction of data and systems. In many cases, this malware has caused widespread operational issues for organizations and critical infrastructure all over the globe. Attackers have increasingly been leveraging and improving upon their wiper malware over the past several years. This talk will cover several notable examples of wiper malware, how they were distributed and the impacts that resulted from these attacks.
Description: There are several vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player that could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the victim machine. The five bugs are all rated as “important.” Three of them are due to out-of-bounds reads.
Description: There is an XPath injection vulnerability in Epic MyChart, a medical records management platform. The bug could allow a remote attacker to access contents of an XML document containing static display settings, such as field labels.
Keep up with all things Talos by following us on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe to the Beers with Talos podcast, which comes out bi-weekly, here (as well as on your favorite podcast app). And, if you’re not already, you can also subscribe to the weekly Threat Source newsletter here.