Cisco Talos Blog

December 1, 2020 11:04

Xanthe - Docker aware miner

By Vanja Svajcer and Adam Pridgen, Cisco Incident Command NEWS SUMMARY * Ransomware attacks and big-game hunting making the headlines, but adversaries use plenty of other methods to monetize their efforts in less intrusive ways. * Cisco Talos recently discovered a cryptocur

November 12, 2020 08:18

CRAT wants to plunder your endpoints

* Cisco Talos has observed a new version of a remote access trojan (RAT) family known as CRAT. * Apart from the prebuilt RAT capabilities, the malware can download and deploy additional malicious plugins on the infected endpoint. * One of the plugins is a ransomware known as &

September 29, 2020 12:41

LodaRAT Update: Alive and Well

* During our continuous monitoring of LodaRAT, Cisco Talos observed changes in the threat that add new functionality. * Multiple new versions of LodaRAT have been spotted being used in the wild. * These new versions of LodaRAT abandoned their previous obfuscation techniques.

September 24, 2020 11:00

The Internet did my homework

By Jaeson Schultz and Matt Valites. As students return to school for in-person and virtual learning, Cisco Talos discovered an increase in DNS requests coming into Umbrella resolving domains we classify as "academic fraud." Data from Pew Research on back-to-school date

September 21, 2020 00:01

New Snort, ClamAV coverage strikes back against Cobalt Strike

By Nick Mavis. Editing by Joe Marshall and Jon Munshaw. Cisco Talos is releasing a new research paper called “The Art and Science of Detecting Cobalt Strike.” We recently released a more granular set of updated SNORTⓇ and ClamAVⓇ detection signatures to detect attempted obfusca

September 1, 2020 11:00

Quarterly Report: Incident Response trends in Summer 2020

By David Liebenberg and Caitlin Huey. For the fifth quarter in a row, Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR) observed ransomware dominating the threat landscape. Infections involved a wide variety of malware families including Ryuk, Maze, LockBit, and Netwalker, among others.  In

July 22, 2020 11:38

Prometei botnet and its quest for Monero

NEWS SUMMARY * We are used to ransomware attacks and big-game hunting making the headlines, but there are still methods adversaries use to monetize their efforts in less intrusive ways. * Cisco Talos recently discovered a cryptocurrency-mining botnet attack we're calling

July 16, 2020 09:00

What to expect when you’re electing: Talos’ 2020 election security primer

Editor's note: Related reading on Talos election security research: * /what-to-expect-when-youre-electing * /election-roundtable-video * /what-to-expect-electing-disinformation-building-blocks After the 2016 General Election, the talk was all around foreign meddling. Rumo

July 6, 2020 16:00

WastedLocker Goes "Big-Game Hunting" in 2020

By Ben Baker, Edmund Brumaghin, JJ Cummings and Arnaud Zobec. Threat summary * After initially compromising corporate networks, the attacker behind WastedLocker performs privilege escalation and lateral movement prior to activating ransomware and demanding ransom payment. *