Beers with Talos Podcast

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. Other talking points:Unsolicited marketing advice for Pennsylvania government agencies.Dunking on the Tampa Bay Rays.Why Lurene is always right.$8 million worth of exploit development for Apple products.

This was admittedly a tough one to record. In the middle of us trying to respond to the situation in Ukraine, we felt it was important to let our listeners in a bit. Matt, JJ and Liz discuss the work they and their teams are doing in Ukraine to protect critical systems there and keep users online. We also talk about the human side of things, and why it’s important for folks in cybersecurity to think about self care during this time.If you want to stay up to date on Talos’ work in Ukraine and our ongoing research about cybersecurity concerns in the region, continually check cs.co/TalosUA. Here are some additional links to Talos research and Cisco announcements:Livestream with Cisco ThousandEyes, Cisco Secure and Cisco TalosSpam campaigns leveraging Ukraine themes to spread malware, steal cryptocurrencyCisco’s statement on standing with Ukraine

We recorded this special episode live and actually in person last week at the RSA Conference, and we have a special treat for the listeners. The ever-elusive Matt Watchinski, Talos’ fearless leader, joins the show. We mainly spend some time talking about Talos’ work defending Ukraine during the invasion of Russia. Tomorrow, be on the lookout for a more laid-back podcast in the Security Stories feed, because the BWT crew stuck around to record a special episode with them, too.

Recorded May 11, 2020 – Craig wins MVP of the podcast for his attempts to avoid discussing… something. Anyway, we went a little long on this podcast, but stick with us as we wind through the recent Executive Order on cybersecurity, and then discuss another… interesting take on how we should then combat these new threats. I feel almost obligated to let you know before you listen, it’s a letter of marque take, and oddly, we all agreed on something.Full show notes on the Talos blog

You’re not going to believe this, but everyone actually agreed on something in this episode. And no, it’s not regarding the best flavor of beef jerky. In this episode, we discuss a new category of threat actors that we’re choosing to call privateers. The guys discuss why this classification is much needed in the security community, the previous research on this topic, and the ways private security firms can partner with public intelligence agencies to protect against this type of threat. You can find complete show notes and links over on the Talos blog.

Summer hacking, happened so fast….We’ve been trying to enjoy our summer, but supply chain attacks just had to go and ruin the fun. So Mitch got back from fishing and decided to pull the guys together to discuss the Kaseya supply chain attack. We cover this major event BWT-style, and talk phony patches, mitigation strategies, and unsolicited advice for Kaseya’s CISO. For more, you can also watch our recent live stream with Nick Biasini covering everything you need to know about this attack.Also, if you want more Beers with Talos (and you’re listening to this the day it’s released) join us over on the Cisco Twitter account on Thursday, Aug. 5 for a #TalosTakeover. We can’t believe they’re letting us do this, either.

(Uploaded again, this time with the correct music!) The OG Beers with Talos folks are dropping like flies, because now we also have to say goodbye to Joel! We know this has been quite the roller coaster for listeners, but we appreciate you all sticking with us through all these changes. We take some time in Joel’s farewell to discuss “Rent,” as only BWT could, and burnout in cybersecurity.

We’re dropping two episodes today. This is undoubtedly the less serious of the two, as it was recorded prior to the invasion of Ukraine. Check out Ep. #118 for more on that situation. In this episode, though, we got to talk about Talos’ involvement at the Super Bowl. Mitch welcomes on Brett Ellis, who was at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to help defend “The Big Game,” of Talos Incident Response to discuss his experience. He, JJ and Liz talk about what goes into securing these major global events and talk about what it’s like to have to come in and handle someone else’s networking equipment and then parachute out. If you want to learn more about Talos and Cisco Secure at the Super Bowl, you can read Cisco’s announcement.

Our rotation of special guests continues on with Nate Pors from Talos Incident Response. Nate has been following several different attacks in which attackers bypassed multi-factor authentication with “prompt bombing” and other techniques. The crew discusses what the security community can do to make MFA safer and how to improve user education about using the technology. Plus, Matt gets an opportunity to eat some humble pie regarding the FBI and the removal of wireless router malware, so that’s always exciting.

We mainly spend this episode doing some catching up because it’s been a while since we recorded. But on the actual, helpful, front, we discuss a recently released list of the vulnerabilities that are most often exploited in the wild, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.It’s particularly interesting to compare the lists from 2020 and 2021 to see how threat actors have changed up their tactics and parse through all the information to tell you what you need to know. It’s also important to question these types of reports and how helpful they are to defenders.This is also a great episode for any Snort fans out there who are interested in the old days of writing rules for some Y2K-era malware.