Talos Takes

Talos’ spin on security news

Every week, host Jon Munshaw brings on a new guest from Talos or the broader Cisco Secure 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

    Following the LNK metadata trail

    In this episode of Talos Takes I am joined by security researcher Guilherme Venere to discuss their recent research on LNK files. The usage of these files by malicious actors has exploded over the last six months as actors look to move away from macro based initial infection vectors. LNK files do have unique metadata attributes to allows for useful actor and threat tracking capabilities. We'll dig deeper on LNK files as well as the metadata you can leverage. For full details check out the blog at https://blog.talosintelligence.com/following-the-lnk-metadata-trail/

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    Run Time: 00:11:38

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    Year in Review - Threat Landscape Edition

    We're back with another year in review focused episode. This time the focus will be the threat landscape generally and I'll be joined by threat researcher Caitlin Huey. In this episode we'll discuss what we found in the last year, with a focus on the general threat landscape.  We'll spend time discussing dual use tools, lolbins, and the surprising re-emergence of USB attacks in 2022. 

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    Run Time: 00:07:14

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    XLLing and the post macro era

    In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Vanja Svjacer to discuss his recent blog on XLL abuse. This year Microsoft finally removed support for macros from their office suite creating a vacuum in the threat landscape. Macros had been the tool of choice for adversaries for the last several years and the race to find alternatives is underway. In this episode we'll talk a bit about Office Add-Ins and how we've already seen adversaries starting to abuse XLL files in the wild.

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    Run Time: 00:09:21

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    Year in Review: APT Summary Edition

    In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Jacob Finn to discuss the APT summary section of the larger year in review report. These state sponsored actors tend to conduct more sophisticated, targeted campaigns typically related to espionage or other information gathering activities. This episode will dive a bit deeper on what can be found in the report as well as an overview of the state sponsored activity we've observed from the last year.

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    Run Time: 00:13:16

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    Truebot and the Silence group

    In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Tiago Periera to discuss his recent blog on truebot activity. Truebot and the silence group have been active for a number of years operating primarily financially motivated cybercrime. In this episode we will talk about the recent campaign we observed as well as the tools and tactics we uncovered. We'll also discuss the links between these groups and other threat actors, like TA505.

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    Run Time: 00:11:08

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    Year in Review & Ukraine Activities

    In this episode of Talos Takes we are joined by Kendall McKay to discuss the recently released year in review report and dig deep on our activities in Ukraine. The year in review covers a vast amount of data and intel sources to identify some of the key trends we observed in 2022. Our activities in Ukraine have been well documented, in this episode we'll also talk more broadly about the trends and highlight some key findings from the past year.

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    Run Time: 00:09:56

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    Update on LodaRAT and its many variants

    LodaRAT is an AutoIT based RAT that has been distributed for the last several years. Initially tied to the Kasablanka group its distribution has grown over the years. In this episode we'll be talking with the researcher, Chris Neal, to discuss LodaRAT, the campaigns we've been observing along with some key tidbits about how AutoIT is abused by adversaries. Including some fun with decompiling and recompling.

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    Run Time: 00:08:33

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    The basics of InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and how its being abused

    InterPlanetary File System or IPFS has increased in prominence as a file hosting technology associated with Web 3.0. It's probably most well known for hosting NFTs, but this blockchain related technology is also being abused by bad actors. In this episode we'll be talking with Edmund Brumaghin about his recent research into IPFS and his findings. We'll also talk about the ways we've seen malicious actors abuse it and briefly touch on things organizations can do to protect themselves.

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    Run Time: 00:07:53

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    The best (and free) ways to improve your cybersecurity skills

    To wrap up Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we're looking at the best, and free, ways to improve your security skills. Jason Kirkland and David Roman from Cisco Talos Incident Response join Jon to talk about the websites, YouTube channels, social media profiles and more they use to stay up-to-date on security news and polish their cybersecurity skills. 

    Here are links to some of the resources we spoke about in this episode:

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    Run Time: 00:12:12

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    The basics of threat hunting

    To celebrate this week's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month theme, we have a special 101 episode of Talos Takes to cover the basics of threat hunting. This is a crucial skill for any cybersecurity professional-in-training and one of the questions we get the most often. Asheer Malhotra from the Talos Outreach team joins the show to talk about where he starts finding new malware families and threat actors, what the barriers usually are that he has to overcome and what check boxes he has to hit before he can talk about something publicly. For more on this topic, watch our "Threat Hunting 101" livestream from earlier this week here

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    Run Time: 00:10:15

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