Talos Takes
Every two weeks, host Amy Ciminnisi brings on a new guest from Talos or the broader Cisco Security world to break down a complicated security topic. We cover everything from breaking news to attacker trends and emerging threats.
Episodes
243 episodes
Talos Takes Ep. #48: The history of ObliqueRAT
After researching and writing about ObliqueRAT for several months now, Asheer Malhotra joins Talos Takes for the first time to discuss this troj...
Talos Takes Ep. #45: Finding an alternative to SMS multi-factor authentication
It was only a matter of time before we had Wendy Nather from Cisco Secure Duo on the show. We finally met Beers with Talos’ level of stardom, as Wendy joins the show to discuss SMS messages as a form of multi-factor authentication. We break d...
Talos Takes Ep. #44: A super-sized edition for a roundtable discussion on SolarWinds
Welcome to the first-ever XL edition of Talos Takes. This one is a little longer than usual, but we promise you it’s worth it. We recently brought together researchers from all corners of Talos to talk about
Talos Takes Ep. #43: Microsoft Exchange Server emergency show
We put this week’s Talos Takes episode together last minute to discuss the Microsoft Exchange Server zero-day vulnerabilities
Talos Takes Ep. #42: Seriously folks, save your logs
When Pierre Cadieux steps into a Cisco Talos Incident Response engagement, the first thing he wants to do is check out the customer’s logs. But if there are no logs to be found, he...
Talos Takes Ep. #41: Why you should upgrade to Snort 3
For this week’s episode of Talos Takes, we’re switching back to Snort talk. For anyone who hasn’t been on security Twitter over the past month, you may not know that we...
Talos Takes Ep. #47: Masslogger
On this week’s episode of Talos Takes, we go back a month or so to reflect on the Masslogger trojan Talos wrote about earlier this year. This malware may not make national headlines, but that doesn’t mean you should just ignore it. Find out w...
Talos Takes Ep. #40: Lessons learned from our conversations with a ransomware operator
For the first time in Talos Takes history, we have a whopping TWO guests on to talk about Talos’ latest research paper. In this episode, Dmytro Korzhevin and Azim Khodjibaev discuss th...
Talos Takes Ep. #39: An update on SolarWinds as it relates to IoT and OT
We know we just talked about supply chain attacks and SolarWinds last week, but it’s still all anyone in security is talking about. Joe Marshall joins the show this time to approach the SolarWinds breach from an internet-of-things and operati...
Talos Takes Ep. #37: What's with all this talk about supply chain attacks?
The major SolarWinds campaign has been generating headlines for weeks now. And while its specific targets make this attack unique, this is far from ...
Talos Takes Ep. #36: Ransomware's big 2020
Everything was on fire this year, and the internet was no different. Ransomware was the leading cause of headaches and late night for defenders and IT experts this year. On the latest Talos Takes episode (and last of 2020), Azim Khodjibaev jo...
Talos Takes Ep. #46 (XL Edition): Snort 3 roundtable discussion
We’ve got another special XL episode this week, this time about Snort 3. This roundtable covers everything you could know about Snort 3’s life, going back as far as its inception in the early 2010s. We e...
Talos Takes Ep. #35: If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is
More shoppers are expected to buy online this year than ever. Everyone’s encouraged to stay home and avoid lines and crowds due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left retailers offering deals earlier in November than ever before. So how can...
Talos Takes Ep. #34: Free and low-cost security tools
Say you’ve got the basics of security down, and now you want to start putting it into practice. Where do you start? In this Talos Takes episode, we run through some free and low-cost security tools anyone can use to beef up their network. We ...
Talos Takes Ep. #33: How to talk to your parents about cyber security
It’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month! And you know what that means? It’s time to make everyone more aware! Since we all have that special someone in our lives who could use a refresher on internet hygenie, we figured it was time to ta...
Talos Takes Ep. #32: How to keep your children safe while they attend school online
Jon doesn’t have any children. So he found someone who does — Beers with Talos’ own Craig Williams — to talk about remote learning. Children are back to school, and many of them are doing so online. Craig and Jon talk about DNS filters, paren...
Talos Takes Ep. #28: Sharing information on information-sharing
Talos intakes a ridiculous amount of information every day. So how do we parse what is and isn’t important enough to share? In this episode of Talos Takes, Amy Henderson from our Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team talks about our infor...
Talos Takes Ep. #27: Why are we so obsessed with attribution?
On this episode of Talos Takes, we talk all about attribution. Our guest, Martin Lee, recently co-authored a post on the hurdles government agencies and private ...
Talos Takes Ep. #26: How to safely browse the web
There are so many options now for basic web browsing. There are ad-blocking plugins, privacy browsers, incognito mode, password managers — but for the average user, this can be a lot to keep up with. In this episode of Talos Takes, we dissect...
Talos Takes Ep. #25: WastedLocker
This week’s Talos Takes episode is another malware deep dive. Edmund Brumaghin joins the show to talk about WastedLocker, a recent ransomware family he and some other Talos researchers reverse-engineered. Here’s everything you need to know ab...
Talos Takes Ep. #23: How Talos utilizes honeypots
Honeypots are an important part of threat research and detection. In this episode of Talos Takes, we talk to Christopher Evans, who is our resident honeypot expert at Talos. Chris talks about how he uses them every day, why they’re important ...
Talos Takes Ep. #24: LoLBins
LoLBins sound like they’d be funny, but they’re anything but. These “living-off-the-land binaries” make it so that attackers can more easily hide on your system as they disguise themselves as legitimate processes. On this episode of Talos Tak...
Talos Takes Ep. #29: Election security roundtable excerpt
This week’s episode is actually an excerpt from our recently released roundtable on disinformation and American election security. This is a small part of our larger discussion on fake news, state-sponsored actors using fake social media acco...
Talos Takes Ep. #22: Snort 101
The quick and dirty beginner’s guide to what Snort is and how to use. This the podcast accompaniment to the rest of our Snort 101 materials, which can be found on Snort.org/Resources.
Talos Takes Ep. #21: What's really hiding inside the dark web
The dark web sounds scary — and it is. But what exactly does this dark web consist of? Despite what the name may suggest, it’s actually not people selling organs or stolen video games that happened to fall off the back of a truck. But what is...