TALOS

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 23 and Sept. 30. 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...

By Jon Munshaw.  Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.  I’ve spent the past few months with my colleague Ashlee Benge looking at personal health apps’ privacy policies. We found several instances of apps that carry sensitive information stating they would share certain information with third-party advertisers and even law enforcement agencies, if necessary.  One of the most popular period-tracking apps on the Google Play store, Period Calendar Period Tracker, has a privacy policy that states it will "share information with law enforcement agencies, public authorities, or other organizations if We’re [sic] required by law to do so or if such use is reasonably necessary. We will carefully review all such requests to ensure that they have a legitimate basis and are limited to data that law enforcement is authorized to access for specific investigative purposes only."  A report from the Washington Post also released last week found that this app, as well...

By Chetan Raghuprasad and Vanja Svajcer. Cisco Talos discovered a malicious campaign in August 2022 delivering Cobalt Strike beacons that could be used in later, follow-on attacks. Lure themes in the phishing documents in this campaign are related to the job details of a government organization in the United States and a trade union in New Zealand. The attack involves a multistage and modular infection chain with fileless, malicious scripts. Cisco Talos recently discovered a malicious campaign with a modularised attack technique to deliver Cobalt Strike beacons on infected endpoints. The initial vector of this attack is a phishing email with a malicious Microsoft Word document attachment containing an exploit that attempts to exploit the vulnerability CVE-2017-0199, a remote code execution issue in Microsoft Office. If a victim opens the maldoc, it downloads a malicious Word document template hosted on an attacker-controlled Bitbucket repository. Talos discovered two attack met...

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 16 and Sept. 23. 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, orokibot ClamAV.net. For each threat described below, this blog post only...

By Jon Munshaw.  Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.  We’ve seen attackers capitalize on the news time and again, from COVID-19 to U.S.-North Korea relationships and, of course, holiday shopping sales every November.  So, I was far from surprised to see that attackers are already using U.S. President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan as a basis for scams and phishing emails.   The Better Business Bureau and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission both released warnings over the past few weeks around fake offers, scams and website links related to the debt forgiveness plan, with which some borrowers will have up to $20,000 worth of loans forgiven.  Many of these scams, coming via phone calls, text messages and emails, are promising to provide guaranteed access to the forgiveness program or early applications for a fee. (Hint: This will not work.) These attackers may also be looking to steal personal information by asking for things like names, ad...

By Nick Biasini. Insider threats are becoming an increasingly common part of the attack chain, with malicious insiders and unwitting assets playing key roles in incidents over the past year. Social engineering should be part of any organization’s policies and procedures and a key area for user education in 2023 and beyond. Mitigating these types of risks include education, user/access control, and ensuring proper processes and procedures are in place when and if employees leave the organization. Traditionally, attackers try to leverage vulnerabilities to deliver malicious payloads via exploitation. But more recently, that activity has shifted away from exploitation and consistently moved closer and closer to the user. Initially, threat actors loved to trick users into enabling malicious macros in Microsoft Office documents, but as Microsoft moves to blunt the effectiveness of macros, adversaries are always going to move to the next avenue to generate malicious revenue. This is where ...

Lilith >_> of Cisco Talos discovered these vulnerabilities.  Cisco Talos recently discovered a memory corruption vulnerability in the uClibC library that could affect any Unix-based devices that use this library. uClibC and uClibC-ng are lightweight replacements for the popular gLibc library, which is the GNU Project's implementation of the C standard library.  TALOS-2022-1517 (CVE-2022-29503 - CVE-2022-29504) is a memory corruption vulnerability in uClibC and uClibc-ng that can occur if a malicious user repeatedly creates threads.  Many embedded devices utilize this library, but Talos specifically confirmed that the Anker Eufy Homebase 2, version 2.1.8.8h, is affected by this vulnerability. Anker confirmed that they’ve patched for this issue. However, uClibC has not issued an official fix, though we are disclosing this vulnerability in accordance with Cisco’s 90-day vulnerability disclosure policy. Talos tested and confirmed the following software is affected by these vulnerabilities:...

What does your autonomy mean to you? By Ashlee Benge and Jonathan Munshaw. After the recent Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the use of third-party apps to track health care has recently come under additional scrutiny for privacy implications. Many of these apps have privacy policies that state they are authorized to share data with law enforcement investigations, though the exact application of those policies is unclear. The use of health-tracking apps and wearable tech is rising, raising questions around the application of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and HIPPA rules as to who can and cannot collect and share health care information.  It’s become second nature for many users to blindly click on the “Accept” button on an app or website’s privacy policy and terms of service. But in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that reversed previous interpretations of the 14th amen...

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we've observed between Sept. 9 and Sept. 16. 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 ...

By Jon Munshaw.  Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.  Public schools in the United States already rely on our teachers for so much — they have to be educators, occasional parental figures, nurses, safety officers, law enforcement and much more. Slowly, they’re having to add “IT admin” to their list of roles.  Educational institutions have increasingly become a target for ransomware attacks, an issue already highlighted this year by a major cyber attack on the combined Los Angeles school district in California that schools are still recovering from.  Teachers there reported that during the week of the attack, they couldn’t enter attendance, lost lesson plans and presentations, and had to scrap homework plans. Technology has become ever-present in classrooms, so any minimal disruption in a school’s network or software can throw pretty much everything off.  The last thing teachers need to worry about now is defending against a well-funded threat act...