Listen to Talos security experts as they bring their hot takes on current security topics and Talos research to the table. Along the way Lurene, Matt, and Mitch and a rotating chair of special guests will talk about anything (and we mean anything) that's on their minds, from the latest YouTube trends to Olympic curling etiquette. New episodes every other Thursday.
Everyone fears the dreaded 10-out-of-10 CVSS severity score on a vulnerability with "critical" written somewhere on the advisory. But does that number even matter to an attacker or hypothetical defender? Matt, Mitch and Lurene discuss the various ways the security community classifies vulnerabilities and how potential targets can use that information to their advantage. They discuss patching strategies, potential security holes that attackers look for and real-world cases of vulnerabilities that have led to breaches or cyber attacks.
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(Recorded Jan. 27, 2023)
No Matt this episode, so we have two guests in the rotating chair(s): Nick Biasini and David Liebenberg. Lurene, Mitch and our two esteemed companions talk about the human problem of ransomware. Lurene says getting rid of email altogether is the best option — but since that doesn't seem likely anytime soon, what are some other options for enterprises and companies to avoid being hit with the latest phishing scam?
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With this episode, we set out to discuss the first annual Cisco Talos Year in Review report - a look back at the major threats, trends, and topics from 2022 and what we should take forward into 2023. Our guest Dave Liebenberg runs the team behind this report and joins us to discuss *why* his team undertook this effort, and some of the finer points of the report findings. The Year in Review is broken down into four major parts, and Talos will be releasing "topic focus reports" to zoom in on each through February.
...BUT... in reality, we spent the first 20 minutes of the show ranking Thanksgiving foods by awesomeness - henceforth, Ranksgiving - and it was too much fun to cut. If you don't want to be angered or surprised where turkey lands on the list, skip to the 20 minute mark. The #1 spot is definitely a hot take that could upset some listeners, just like it upset to the previous long-standing title holder.
Check out the Year in Review page (https://blog.talosintelligence.com/year-in-review) for the full Year in Review report, topic summary reports, livestreams, podcasts, and other content starting December 14th.
We are (finally) talking about the recent OpenSSL vulnerability as we had to redo this EP. In our infinite podcasting wisdom, we took a stab at it roughly 2 hours before the embargo expired and coverage was released - which is obviously is a very silly idea in hindsight.
After we cover the current issue at hand, Lurene leads us through the surface levels of how vulns can be exploited in the heap or stack, and the different perspective and processes in practice by offensive security experts. If you want to walk away with a new view of vulns and exploits, stay for the whole hour.
Here is a great write up from DataDog on OpenSSL vulnerability CVE-2022-3602.
Mitch was trying to preserve his voice, so Matt is driving the bus during this episode — hang on! In this edition, we're talking about script kiddies (unfortunately, not "kitties.") These are basically adversaries with an extreme base level of computer knowledge who use basic scripts to carry out cyber attacks. How can we avoid these attacks, even if they'll look like benign activity in your environment?
At the onset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many experts and government officials expected there to be two fronts of the war — one on the ground in Ukraine and one in cyberspace. But all things considered, we haven't seen as much offensive cyber warfare come from either side of this conflict this year. J.J. Cummings from Talos Threat Intelligence and Interdiction joins the show again to share his experience from working hands-on with networks in Ukraine. He, Lurene, Mitch and Matt discuss why there haven't been as many offensive attacks as we were expecting, or if they're just happening in the background and no one's talking about it.
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We're excited to add to the growing Beers with Talos family with the addition of Lurene Grenier to the squad. Lurene joins her first episode and hits the ground running talking about her current role within Talos. She, Mitch and Matt talk about the major differences between exploit development and vulnerability discovery, and how Lurene started her career in exploit development. While exploit development might sound like the stereotypical thing a "basement hacker" does, it's actually very important to the security arena and something a hobbyist can easily turn into a career.
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