Talos Takes

Latest Episodes:

XL Edition: Talos' update on our work in Ukraine Sep 02, 2022

Show notes

This week, we have the audio version of our recent livestream for Ukraine Independence Day. Talos assembled a panel of experts who have been working hands-on to defend critical Ukraine systems and its citizens from cyber threats. JJ Cummings, Ashlee Benge and Dmytro Krozhevin answer questions from Hazel Burton about the current security threats Ukraine faces, what Talos has done to hunt for threats in the region and how Cisco is supporting its employees in Ukraine.

Talos Takes Ep. #110: The kinetic and cyber threats Ukrainian agriculture faces Aug 26, 2022

Show notes

An underrated aspect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the effect it’s had on the global food supply chain. Ukraine is a major importer and exporter of grain and other food staples, but the industry now faces kinetic and cyber threats. Joe Marshall of Talos has spent months learning all about agricultural cybersecurity and the unique position farming equipment and infrastructure is in. Joe recently wrote about these threats for the Talos blog and joins Talos Takes to talk about how important Ukraine is to the global food supply chain and what law enforcement and global governments can do to prepare for potential state-sponsored attacks.

Talos Takes Ep. #109: Why cybercrime is going small-time Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

The public traditionally thinks about cyber attacks as being from some well-funded, state-sponsored actor. But increasingly small-time criminals are turning to the internet to make their money. Increasingly, they’re not carrying out one-off robberies, and instead are working on insurance fraud scams and spam emails. Nick Biasini joins Talos Takes this week to discuss his recent research into this topic and shares what the data shows about the growth of small-time cybercrime.

Talos Takes Ep. #102: Unmasking ransomware groups on the dark web Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

Paul Eubanks joins this week’s episode of Talos Takes to look at his recent blog post on de-anonymizing ransomware groups on the whispers dark web. Paul and his team recently used several tactics to unmask several threat actors and disclosure their tactics to stay hidden. Jon interviews Paul about ransomware actors’ usual operations on the dark web, the specific tools and tactics he used and the pros and cons of calling out actors for their opsec failures.

Talos Takes Ep. #97: MustangPanda stays agnostic Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

See people, this is what happens when you finally let a panda drive a sports car! This week’s episode of Talos Takes covers the basics of MustangPanda, a Chinese state-sponsored actor we wrote about recently. Asheer Maholtra joins the show to go over his research into this group. Mainly, we discuss why this actor, despite being aligned with China, is targeting Russian government entities and organizations. Though the two countries seem to be allies, all is fair in love and cyber espionage.

Talos Takes Ep. #96: Takeaways from victim chats with two ransomware groups Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

Kendall McKay joins Jon this week to discuss the Hive and Conti ransomware chats she and her colleagues recently reviewed. We obtained some leaked chats between these ransomware groups and some of their victims, showing us what communicating with an attacker is really like. Jon and Kendall discuss the negotiation process over a ransom payment and what else we learned from these chat logs.

Talos Takes Ep. #95 (XL Edition): CTIR recaps last quarter's top threats Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, we’re bringing you the recording of last week’s live stream with Cisco Talos Incident Response. Beers with Talos’ own Liz Waddell hosted the first in our new “On Air” series with CTIR, where she and her fellow Talosians recapped the previous quarter’s top threats. They run through the malware families CTIR saw most in the field and discussed other trends that threat actors are starting to adapt.

Talos Takes Ep. #94: Everything you need to know about the BlackCat ransomware group Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

BlackCat, BlackMatter, DarkSide, BlackByte…it’s too hard to keep up with all these ransomware group names these days. So we’re here to break down one of these groups, BlackCat, for you so you can figure out what makes them actually memorable. Aliza Berk from our Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team joins Jon Munshaw this week to talk about BlackCat and their ransomware that’s recently become a major player on the malware landscape. Aliza recently compiled our latest Threat Assessment Report on this group and assisted in our research around the group. Jon and Aliza discuss how the use of the Rust programming language and using triple extortion tactics make this group a threat.

Talos Takes Ep. #93: Kenna 101 — Best patching and mitigation strategies Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

Continuing the “Kenna 101” series over at Talos Takes, Ed Bellis re-joins the show to talk about patching and mitigation strategies. So far, we’ve talked about how to tell when you should take a CVE seriously. But what if there’s no patch for it? Or what if you have to patch 50 vulnerabilities in the same product? We talk about how Kenna can help security teams of all sizes prioritize their patching strategies and create mitigation strategies in the worst-case scenario. For the other entries in our Kenna 101 series, listen here and here.

Talos Takes Ep. #92: Kenna 101 — How to read a CVE Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

Continuing our “Kenna 101” series, Jon is joined this week by Jerry Gamblin, Kenna’s director of security research. Jerry is an expert at all things CVE’s, so we reflect on reading vulnerability reports and analyzing specific CVEs. We discuss if “severity” scores even really mean anything, and how to interpret a maximum 10/10 score versus an attacker vector or type of vulnerability.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected