Talos Takes

With major cyber attacks in recent years against major U.S. critical infrastructure suppliers like Norsk Hydro and Colonial Pipeline, we’re in a new world of CI cybersecurity. New threats require new approaches to defense. And in the U.S., this is likely going to include partnerships between those who manage critical infrastructure, government and the private cybersecurity sector.

Talos recently outlined what this may look like in America. One of the authors of that post, Joe Marshall, joins Jon Munshaw this week on Talos Takes to talk about public-private partnerships to defend critical infrastructure.

How much is ransomware-as-a-service like a McDonald’s franchise? More similar than you’d think! The RaaS model has entered the mainstream over the past few months with groups such as DarkSide attacking the Colonial Pipeline.

In these transactions, what’s in it for the original ransomware creator? And what do the operators themselves get out of it? Nick Biasini joins Jon Munshaw this week to talk about this business model, what it means for the rise in ransomware attacks, and how you can stay protected.

Business email compromise may seem like last decade’s threat, but it’s still just as prevalent as ever. A recent FBI report found that it cost users more than $1 billion in 2020, and attackers are now capitalizing on everything from PlayStation 5 sales to the COVID-19 pandemic to still scam people. On this week’s Talos Takes, Nick Biasini recaps his recent research into BEC and discusses why there are some reasons why this threat may never go away (hint: users).

We started out the COVID-19 pandemic by thinking we’d be away from the office for a month — maybe two. More than 12 months later, we’re still here, working from home (at least part-time).

But some businesses are starting to reopen now and welcoming workers back into the office. After so much time working out of the office, what should security professionals do once they get back? In this week’s episode, Beers with Talos’ own Craig Williams joins the show to talk about triple-checking for patches, changing passwords and more. Plus, how should you handle the new hybrid worker?

Asheer Malhotra from Talos Outreach has followed Transparent Tribe for years now. This APT has been all over the place using all sorts of trojans. So where my they go next? Asheer joins Talos Takes this week to discuss the malware this group deploys and how they use typo-squatted domains to lure victims in.

In this special “XL edition” of Talos Takes, we’re bringing you the audio version of our live stream this week discussing the Kaseya supply chain attack. Nick Biasini from Talos Outreach went live with Hazel Burton, a Cisco product marketing manager, to discuss what transpired over the long Fourth of July weekend. 
Nick discussed the Kaseya exploit leveraged in this campaign, plus the follow-on ransomware attacks. This is the best place to get the tl;dr on what happened, what you need to be doing now, and what Cisco Secure solutions can keep you protected.

Welcome to the unofficial incident response week at Talos! As part of the RSA Conference, we’ve released two new case studies detailing some malware cases Cisco Talos Incident Response helped resolve. Brad Garnett, this week’s guest, also released a new blog post where he wrote about why incident response is “the ultimate team sport.” Brad joins host Jon Munshaw this week to take a deeper dive into one of these engagements, in which an attacker tried to use Cobalt Strike to infect a target with ransomware (hint: this would have been really bad!) Brad talks about how the strong personal relationships CTIR built with the customer in question set everyone up for success.

To celebrate World Password Day this week, we’re talking about getting rid of passwords! Dave Lewis, a global advisory CISO for Cisco Secure, joins Jon to talk about all things passwordless. This is a new initiative Cisco Secure and Duo have undertaken to get network administrators to move away from using passwords in favor of other forms of authentication. Jon and Dave discuss why passwords can be dangerous, the benefits of going passwordless and how to convince longtime users to ditch traditional login credentials.

We can set our watches to tax scams every year in April. The bad guys are always looking to steal your information, promising to get you a bigger tax return or do your taxes for you. This year is a bit different because Tax Day is a bit later than usual thanks to — you guessed it — COVID. Attackers are now combining these two topics to create spam campaigns, promising to provide you new information about how COVID affects your taxes, or even promising to send you a gift in exchange for receiving your COVID vaccine. Jaeson Schultz makes his inaugural appearance on Talos Takes to discuss what he’s seeing in the wild and how you can avoid these common scams.

Cisco Talos recently discovered a wave of attackers spreading malware via collaboration apps like Discord and Slack. On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, Nick Biasini joins the show to bring us inside his research process for this post and discuss why these attacks have been so successful. Jon brings up his Dungeons & Dragons group, too, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.