Talos Takes Cisco Talos

The Volt Typhoon threat actor is one of the longest-running cybersecurity storylines this year. The Chinese state-sponsored actor has already been accused of a range of attacks, specifically targeting critical infrastructure and U.S. military bases. Since it's been a few months without any new developments with this group, we thought it'd be a good idea to check in with Talos' Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team on what's going on with this actor, and if they're up to anything new.

Inspired by his quotes in a recent CNBC article, Jon Munshaw wanted to have Martin Lee on the show this week to discuss AI and how adversaries can use these tools to create deepfakes and disinformation. Martin shares why he thinks the threats of increasing fake news with the advent of AI tools are a bit overblown, and how the dangers in spreading fake news come more from text-based posts than any deepfake video or audio. If you'd like to learn more about how to detect potential deepfake video...

Nicole Hoffman, fresh off her trip to the RSA Conference, joins host Jon Munshaw this week to talk about her major takeaways from the week in San Francisco. Nicole talks about how most of the discussions on the floor centered around AI, and what lessons other defenders are learning from some of our past mistakes. If you'd like to check out Nicole's other work, buy her children's cybersecurity books on Amazon.

Joey Chen from Talos' Outreach team is here to tell us all about his research into the CoralRaider threat actor. He's helped write two posts on the recently discovered APT, disclosing new information about how this Vietnamese-based actor is targeting login credentials. After stealing those credentials, they go on to try and sell them on the dark web, or use them to try and brute force their way into more important accounts. Joey discusses what this actor is really after, and why they've been ...

Hazel Burton steps in to host this week's episode as we cover the recent Cisco Talos Incident Response Quarterly Trends Report from the first quarter of this year. Hazel talks to different Talosians to find out why business email compromise is on the rise, how attackers are bypassing MFA, and more.

After a recent spike in brute force attempts targeting SSH and VPN services, we felt it was a good time to give listeners a lesson on brute force attacks. Nick Biasini joins host Jon Munshaw this week to discuss the basics of these methods, how administrators can protect their accounts, and other potential defense mechanisms (or whether to just take passwords out of the equation entirely).