Cisco Talos Blog

November 20, 2019 11:00

Cryptominers, ransomware among top malware in IR engagements in Q4

By David Liebenberg and Kendall McKay. This summer’s most popular malware families were common and used in unsophisticated attacks, with phishing being the top infection vector, according to Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR) data. In addition to threat actors repeatedly deplo

May 30, 2019 10:19

10 years of virtual dynamite: A high-level retrospective of ATM malware

ATM malware has evolved to include a number of different families and different actors behind them, ranging from criminal groups to actors affiliated with nation states.

May 20, 2019 11:00

Recent MuddyWater-associated BlackWater campaign shows signs of new anti-detection techniques

By Danny Adamitis, David Maynor, and Kendall McKay. Cisco Talos assesses with moderate confidence that a campaign we recently discovered called "BlackWater" is associated with suspected persistent threat actor MuddyWater. Newly associated samples from April 2019 indica

April 23, 2019 13:00

DNSpionage brings out the Karkoff

Update 4/24: The C2 section below now includes details around the XOR element of the C2 communication system. Executive summary In November 2018, Cisco Talos discovered an attack campaign, called DNSpionage, in which threat actors created a new remote administrative tool that

October 31, 2018 10:31

Anatomy of a sextortion scam

While these attacks have been in the wild for months, Talos wanted to take a closer look at some of these campaigns to see why users were being tricked into sending the attackers large amounts of bitcoin despite the attackers' empty threats.

October 5, 2018 12:23

Threat Roundup Sept 28 - Oct 5

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Sept. 28 and Oct. 5. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats

September 28, 2018 09:14

Threat Roundup Sept 21 - 28

Today, as we do every week, Talos is giving you a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed this week — covering the dates between Sept. 21 and 28. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, we will summarize the threats we

May 16, 2018 13:17

TeleGrab - Grizzly Attacks on Secure Messaging

The malware is mainly targeting Russian-speaking victims, and is intentionally avoiding IP addresses related with anonymizer services.

January 31, 2018 10:58

Ransom Where? Malicious Cryptocurrency Miners Takeover, Generating Millions

his post was authored by Nick Biasini, Edmund Brumaghin, Warren Mercer and Josh Reynolds with contributions from Azim Khodijbaev and David Liebenberg. Executive Summary The threat landscape is constantly changing; over the last few years malware threat vectors, methods and pay