The safety penalty: Reclaiming operational sovereignty in the age of AI
As frontier AI models become increasingly restrictive, security teams are facing a "safety penalty" that hampers real-time incident response. Discover how organizations can move toward operational sovereignty to ensure their defensive AI keeps pace with unconstrained adversaries.
Is Cyber missing the Marque?
In this week's newsletter, new author Mick Baccio introduces himself and explores the operational and security implications of the new White House memorandum regarding private sector participation in government-authorized offensive cyber operations.
UAT-10147 deploys SPECTRE: A cross-platform implant with Linux rootkit and BYOVD capabilities
The newly identified SPECTRE implant represents an evolution in commodity intrusion tooling, integrating cross-platform C2 operations, process injection, credential theft, anti-analysis protections, and kernel-level endpoint detection and response (EDR) bypass functionality.
UAT-10147: Chinese-speaking adversary integrates agentic AI into post-compromise operations
Cisco Talos discovered a Chinese-speaking cybercrime group, tracked as UAT-10147, that targets a wide range of vulnerable web servers. This is an overview of the campaign, examining the countries affected, potential impact of BadIIS infections, the attack chain, and post-compromise tactics.
Describing attacks with crime script analysis
Martin explores how using crime script analysis to describe an attack with everyday language makes the situation accessible to non-technical audiences and identify points where the crime can be disrupted.
Curiouser and Curiouser
In this edition of the Threat Source newsletter, William reflects on the “Make Hazel a Hacker” segment in Beers with Talos, and how cybersecurity is a field where questions can lead to multiple correct answers.
Dissecting the JWR phishing framework
Cisco Talos recently identified an undocumented phishing framework, internally branded "JWR" by its developer, built to convincingly impersonate checkout and login pages across major payment and shopping platforms.
Microsoft Patch Tuesday for August 2026 — Snort rules and prominent vulnerabilities
Microsoft has released its monthly security update for August 2026, which includes 421 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 62 that Microsoft marked as "critical."
Why metaphor may dictate your security strategy
In this week's newsletter, Martin looks at how the metaphors we use to describe AI "escaping" its sandbox can completely change how we react to the threat.