TALOS

Ransomware and pre-ransomware engagements make up 40 percent of threats seen this quarter By Caitlin Huey. For the first time since compiling these reports, Cisco Talos Incident Response saw an equal number of ransomware and pre-ransomware engagements, making up nearly 40 percent of threats this quarter.   It can be difficult to determine what constitutes a pre-ransomware attack if ransomware never executes and encryption does not take place. However, Talos IR assesses that the combination of Cobalt Strike and credential-harvesting tools like Mimikatz, paired with enumeration and discovery techniques, indicates a high likelihood that ransomware is the final objective. This quarter featured a variety of publicly available tools and scripts hosted on GitHub repositories or other third-party websites to support operations across multiple stages of the attack lifecycle. This activity coincides with a general increase in the use of other dual-use tools, such as the legitimate red-teaming ...

A lack of MFA remains one of the biggest impediments to enterprise security.

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Oct. 14 and Oct. 21. As with previous roundups, this post isn't meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we've observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats. As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net. For each threat described below, this blog post only lists 2...

By Jon Munshaw.  Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.  I’m very excited about this video I’ve embedded below — it’s a project I’ve been working on with my team for a while now. Building off what I’ve written about in the past regarding fake news, this video examines what essentially equates to the propaganda being spread on social media during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  This includes everything from fake videos of soldiers dancing to Ukrainian laser cats and fairly convincing deepfake videos.  The Russia cybersecurity news doesn’t end there, either. State-sponsored actors have been busy over the past month, including the Killnet group, which recently targeted several U.S. local elections offices and major airports. So far, these cyber attacks don’t seem to have had any major effects or disruptions so far, but I just think it’s worth noting that these groups are just as active as ever, which is what the U.S. government has been warning us about sin...

State-sponsored actors have been busy over the past month, including the Killnet group, which recently targeted several U.S. local elections offices and major airports.

State-sponsored actors have been busy over the past month, including the Killnet group, which recently targeted several U.S. local elections offices and major airports.

Matt Wiseman of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities. Blog by Jon Munshaw.  Cisco Talos recently discovered several vulnerabilities in the Abode Systems iota All-In-One Security Kit. This kit includes a main security camera and hub that can alert users of unwanted movement in their homes. It also includes several motion sensors that can be attached to windows and doors.   The devices communicate with the user via a website or app on their mobile device and can connect to smart hubs like Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Apple Homekit.  The vulnerabilities Talos discovered could lead to a variety of conditions, including providing attackers with the ability to change users’ login passwords, inject code onto the device, manipulate sensitive device configurations, and cause the system to shut down. The devices contain several format string injection vulnerabilities in various functions of its software that could lead to memory corruption, information disclosure and a denial of servic...

Cisco Talos recently discovered several vulnerabilities in the Abode Systems iota All-In-One Security Kit.

Cisco Talos recently discovered several vulnerabilities in the Abode Systems iota All-In-One Security Kit.

By Abhishek Singh. BEC is a multi-stage attack. Adversaries first identify targets, then they establish rapport with the victim before exploiting them for whatever their end goal is. In the case of BEC, a threat actor can impersonate any employee in the organization to trick targets.   A policy that checks for authorized email addresses of the sender can prevent BEC attacks. However, scaling the approach for every employee in a large organization is a challenge.   Building an executive profile based on email analysis using a machine learning model and scanning emails against that profile will detect BEC. Data collection for building and training machine learning algorithms can take time, though, opening a window of opportunity for threat actors to exploit.   Detection of exploitation techniques such as lookalike domains and any differences in the email addresses in the "From" and "Reply-to" fields can also detect BEC messages. However, the final verdict cannot account for the threat ...