Talos Takes

It’s time to start having fun and messing with your attackers. For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Martin Lee joins Amy to discuss the fine art of making life on your network a complete nightmare for adversaries. Simple, low-maintenance decoys — like fake credentials, empty honeypots, and ghost systems — can turn your infrastructure into a minefield that keeps attackers guessing and wastes their resources. Join us to learn how to turn the tables, gain threat intel on who is trying to get into ...

In this episode of Talos Takes, Amy sits down with researcher Vanja Svajcer to break down a sophisticated, multi-stage infection chain that leverages a combination of ClickFix social engineering, WebDAV, and decentralized infrastructure. Vanja walks us through how threat actors are repurposing legitimate user behaviors — like solving CAPTCHAs — to gain unauthorized access, and how they utilize blockchain smart contracts as bulletproof storage for malicious code. We also explore the divergence...

Ah, the crisp fall air, brand-new books and backpacks, and the quiet irony of cybercriminals turning on each other to steal a few extra bucks. Security Engineer Sean Gallagher joins Amy to break down a scam where threat actors are weaponizing greed to turn amateur cybercriminals against themselves. This browser-based attack tricks targets into injecting malicious code into their own sessions under the guise of exploiting a fictional vulnerability to earn crypto-profits. While this current ope...

As the new academic year begins, school districts face a surge in cybersecurity threats, from phishing attacks and ransomware to student experimentation with network devices. In this episode, Amy sits down with Cisco Talos expert Pierre Cadieux to discuss practical strategies for IT practitioners. How do you strengthen your defenses while managing the delicate balance between security and classroom usability? Here are the most high-priority steps to keep your district safe this semester...

What happens when a QR code leads to a major security incident? In this episode, Amy sits down with Senior Incident Response Consultant Terryn Valikodath to break down a recent, high-stakes breach at an Australian medical center. Attackers are ditching traditional malware for "cloud-native" tactics — using personalized QR code phishing to bypass corporate defenses and operate entirely within the cloud. Beyond the technical details, Amy and Terryn chat about the pressure of defending env...