Newsletter compiled by Jon Munshaw.
Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter — the perfect place to get caught up on all things Talos from the past week.
The only news we’re going to cover this week is the biggest news we’ve had in a while. Tuesday, we announced that Cisco Incident Response was becoming part of the Talos family. We’ve been working together for years, but now we’ll be closer than ever, so Incident Response can benefit from Talos’ intelligence, while their boots-on-the-ground experience will only add to Talos’ portfolio.
Check out our announcement blog post for more information. The Talos Incident Response at-a-glance also provides an overview of the services IR provides. And the new IR page on TalosIntelligence.com gives you an easy way to contact IR, should you need their services.
We also have a special edition of the Beers with Talos podcast, where Amy Henderson of Talos’ Threat Interdiction team joins us to talk about the benefits of this new relationship.
Event:“It’s Never DNS…. It Was DNS: How Adversaries Are Abusing Network Blind Spots” at SecureWV/Hack3rCon X
**Location:**Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center, Charleston, WV
**Date:**Nov. 15 - 17
**Speakers:**Edmund Brumaghin and Earl Carter
**Synopsis:**While DNS is one of the most commonly used network protocols in most corporate networks, many organizations don’t give it the same level of scrutiny as other network protocols present in their environments. DNS has become increasingly attractive to both red teams and malicious attackers alike to easily subvert otherwise solid security architectures. This presentation will provide several technical breakdowns of real-world attacks that have been seen leveraging DNS for a variety of purposes such as DNSMessenger, DNSpionage, and more.
Event:“Reading Telegram messages abusing the shadows” at BSides Lisbon**** **Location: **Auditorio FMD-UL, Lisbon, Portugal **Date: **Nov. 28 - 29 **Speakers: **Vitor Ventura **Synopsis: **One of the cornerstones of privacy today is secure messaging applications like Telegram, which deploy end-to-end encryption to protect the communications. But several clone applications have been created and distributed with the intent of spying on their users. In this talk, Vitor will demonstrate how the Telegram registration process became abused, allowing message interception on non-rooted Android devices without replacing the official application. This is another example on how encryption is not a panacea, and that side-channel attacks like this are a real problem for otherwise secure applications.
Event:“Signed, Sealed, Compromised: The Past, Present, and Future of Supply Chain Attacks” at CactusCon
**Location:**Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center, Charleston, WV
Date: Dec. 6 - 7 **Speakers: **Edmund Brumaghin and Earl Carter **Synopsis: **This talk will discuss the common techniques we’re seeing in supply chain attacks. Supply chain attacks are a broad topic, but one that has continued to evolve and mature over the last decade. Nick and Edmund will walk through what a supply chain attack constitutes, the history of how these attacks have evolved, and where we see this attack technique moving in the future.
Title:Use-after-free bug in Chrome could allow complete system takeover
**Description:**Google Chrome is urging users to update their web browsers as soon as possible due to a critical use-after-free vulnerability. The company says it will be releasing updates this week to protect against exploitation of the bug. The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-13720, exists in Chrome’s audio component, and could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or enable full remote code execution capabilities.
**Snort SIDs:52068, 52069
** ****Title:Two remote code execution vulnerabilities in Investintech Able2Extract
**Description:**Cisco Talos recently discovered two remote code execution vulnerabilities in Investintech’s Able2Extract Professional. This software is a cross-platform PDF tool for Windows, Mac and Linux that converts PDFs and allows users to create and edit them. Other features include PDF signing, redactions and annotations. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code on the victim machine.
**Snort SIDs:**50864 - 50869
SHA 256: 7acf71afa895df5358b0ede2d71128634bfbbc0e2d9deccff5c5eaa25e6f5510 **MD5:**4a50780ddb3db16ebab57b0ca42da0fb **Typical Filename:**xme64-2141.exe **Claimed Product: **N/A Detection Name: W32.7ACF71AFA8-95.SBX.TG
SHA 256:3f6e3d8741da950451668c8333a4958330e96245be1d592fcaa485f4ee4eadb3
MD5: 47b97de62ae8b2b927542aa5d7f3c858 **Typical Filename:**qmreportupload **Claimed Product:**qmreportupload Detection Name: Win.Trojan.Generic::in10.talos
SHA 256: 6b01db091507022acfd121cc5d1f6ff0db8103f46a1940a6779dc36cca090854 **MD5:**74f4e22e5be90d152521125eaf4da635 **Typical Filename:**jsonMerge.exe **Claimed Product:**ITSPlatform **Detection Name: **W32.GenericKD:Attribute.22lk.1201
SHA 256:46b241e3d33811f7364294ea99170b35462b4b5b85f71ac69d75daa487f7cf08
MD5: db69eaaea4d49703f161c81e6fdd036f **Typical Filename: **xme32-2141-gcc.exe **Claimed Product:**N/A Detection Name: W32.46B241E3D3-95.SBX.TG
SHA 256: 85b936960fbe5100c170b777e1647ce9f0f01e3ab9742dfc23f37cb0825b30b5 **MD5:**8c80dd97c37525927c1e549cb59bcbf3 **Typical Filename:**Eternalblue-2.2.0.exe **Claimed Product:**N/A Detection Name: W32.WNCryLdrA:Trojan.22k2.1201