Talos Takes

Talos’ spin on security news

Every week, our host brings on a new guest from Talos or the broader Cisco Security world to break down a complicated security topic in just five or 10 minutes. We cover everything from breaking news to attacker trends and emerging threats.

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  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #97: MustangPanda stays agnostic

    See people, this is what happens when you finally let a panda drive a sports car! This week’s episode of Talos Takes covers the basics of MustangPanda, a Chinese state-sponsored actor we wrote about recently. Asheer Maholtra joins the show to go over his research into this group. Mainly, we discuss why this actor, despite being aligned with China, is targeting Russian government entities and organizations. Though the two countries seem to be allies, all is fair in love and cyber espionage.

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    Run Time: 00:08:00

    Keywords
    • MustangPanda
    • APTs
    • state-sponsored
    • ransomware
    • trojans

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #96: Takeaways from victim chats with two ransomware groups

    Kendall McKay joins Jon this week to discuss the Hive and Conti ransomware chats she and her colleagues recently reviewed. We obtained some leaked chats between these ransomware groups and some of their victims, showing us what communicating with an attacker is really like. Jon and Kendall discuss the negotiation process over a ransom payment and what else we learned from these chat logs.

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    Run Time: 00:11:46

    Keywords
    • Hive
    • Conti
    • ransomware
    • malware

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #95 (XL Edition): CTIR recaps last quarter's top threats

    On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, we’re bringing you the recording of last week’s live stream with Cisco Talos Incident Response. Beers with Talos’ own Liz Waddell hosted the first in our new “On Air” series with CTIR, where she and her fellow Talosians recapped the previous quarter’s top threats. They run through the malware families CTIR saw most in the field and discussed other trends that threat actors are starting to adapt.

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    Run Time: 00:39:16

    Keywords
    • CTIR
    • Incident Response
    • ransomware
    • malware

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #94: Everything you need to know about the BlackCat ransomware group

    BlackCat, BlackMatter, DarkSide, BlackByte…it’s too hard to keep up with all these ransomware group names these days. So we’re here to break down one of these groups, BlackCat, for you so you can figure out what makes them actually memorable. Aliza Berk from our Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team joins Jon Munshaw this week to talk about BlackCat and their ransomware that’s recently become a major player on the malware landscape. Aliza recently compiled our latest Threat Assessment Report on this group and assisted in our research around the group. Jon and Aliza discuss how the use of the Rust programming language and using triple extortion tactics make this group a threat.

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    Run Time: 00:08:19

    Keywords
    • BlackCat
    • ransomware
    • BlackMatter
    • malware
    • APTs

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #93: Kenna 101 — Best patching and mitigation strategies

    Continuing the “Kenna 101” series over at Talos Takes, Ed Bellis re-joins the show to talk about patching and mitigation strategies. So far, we’ve talked about how to tell when you should take a CVE seriously. But what if there’s no patch for it? Or what if you have to patch 50 vulnerabilities in the same product? We talk about how Kenna can help security teams of all sizes prioritize their patching strategies and create mitigation strategies in the worst-case scenario. For the other entries in our Kenna 101 series, listen here and here.

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    Run Time: 00:09:31

    Keywords
    • vulnerabilities
    • patching
    • Kenna Security
    • vulnerability research

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #92: Kenna 101 — How to read a CVE

    Continuing our “Kenna 101” series, Jon is joined this week by Jerry Gamblin, Kenna’s director of security research. Jerry is an expert at all things CVE’s, so we reflect on reading vulnerability reports and analyzing specific CVEs. We discuss if “severity” scores even really mean anything, and how to interpret a maximum 10/10 score versus an attacker vector or type of vulnerability.

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    Run Time: 00:09:56

    Keywords
    • Kenna
    • vulnerabilities
    • patching
    • exploits

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #91: The tax scams cometh

    It’s tax season! You know what that means — sadness, frustration and scams. Host Jon Munshaw sat down with Nick Biasini from the Talos Outreach team to talk about common tactics adversaries use around this “holiday” to try and spread malware, steal personal information and take users’ money. We talk about free security tools you can deploy to block these types of threats, common spam tactics to keep an eye out for and other services that can help you prepare for a worst-case scenario.

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    Run Time: 00:06:09

    Keywords
    • tax
    • Tax Day
    • spam
    • scams
    • email

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #90: Kenna Security 101

    We’re kicking off a new series of episodes called “Kenna 101” highlighting Cisco’s newest partner, Kenna Security. Kenna is a risk management platform for vulnerabilities that allows users to view what vulnerabilities exist in their environment and helps them create a plan for patching and mitigation. We’re starting things off with the CTO of Kenna, Ed Bellis, to talk about the basics of Kenna and its risk scores.

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    Run Time: 00:09:56

    Keywords
    • Kenna
    • security
    • vulnerabilities
    • patching

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #89: Taking the Meta out of the Metaverse

    When most people think of the “Metaverse,” they may first think of the company Meta — the recently rebranded Facebook. After all, what other company would really want everyone taking meetings virtually using avatars while you share your cryptocurrency wallets and personal information with them? The Metaverse is actually much larger than this, though. So in this Talos Takes episode, we’re trying to demystify the Metaverse and look at what it is, exactly. Researcher Jaeson Schultz recaps his recent blog post on the matter, and then he and Jon talk about the potential security pitfalls that could arise from adopting the Metaverse.

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    Run Time: 00:12:21

    Keywords
    • Metaverse
    • Meta
    • cryptocurrency
    • scams

  • Talos Takes

    Talos Takes Ep. #88: Biden's crypto executive order is good for good guys and bad for bad guys

    Jon and Nick sit down for a few minutes to talk about U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent Executive Order on more heavily regulating cryptocurrency. For a primer on this episode, you can read a quick overview here. This episode pretty much sums it up as being a good thing for anyone who uses cryptocurrency legitimately, and bad for anyone who uses crypto to do anything illegal. We discuss how greater regulation could affect ransomware operators who rely on virtual currency for ransom payments and illegitimate miners, and why no one using Bitcoin legitimately should be worried.

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    Run Time: 00:07:11

    Keywords
    • cryptocurrency
    • cryptominers
    • ransomware
    • ransom
    • government