Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. 

Here for the latest on the PHP vulnerabilities? Head on down to ‘The One Big Thing’. Talos has published a blog to explain what we know so far, and details the Snort coverage available, including rules in the Community Ruleset. 

But if you want a bit of levity, here’s what I wrote before everything kicked off yesterday: 

Ever feel like the world is moving too fast to keep up? Well, I bring you scientific proof that it’s not just you. 

For millions of years, the moon has been slowing down the Earth’s rotation. But over the past decade, we’ve been speeding up (I KNEW I was aging faster than before). Apparently, changes in the Earth’s core are involved (either that, or the 1978 Superman film was a documentary). 

This is all causing massive headaches for the people responsible for keeping time. They’re officially called “The International Bureau of Weights and Measures”, but I’m going to call them “The Time-Keepers”. For nerd reasons).  

The issue is that the atomic clocks that power so many of our systems, and the rotation of our planet, don’t always agree. Atomic clocks keep extremely consistent time, while each Earth day is rarely the same length as the next. Atomic timekeeping absolutely cannot stand that level of flexibility (have a watch of our “The Light We Keep” documentary to see the importance that accurate clocks have on critical infrastructure).  

To keep Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is based on atomic clocks, aligned with Earth’s rotation, we introduced a “leap second” in 1972. This system allows for an extra second to be added, or taken away, when we stray too far from atomic time. 

A few days ago, The Time-Keepers voted to officially abolish the leap second. Why? Well, there’s a few parts to it. 

For the past 54 years, we’ve never once had a second removed from our lives. They’ve always been added (27 of them to be precise). I myself have experienced 20 of these extra seconds. If I’d have known that, I’d have used them more wisely. Like thinking before saying, “Love you too!” to the post-person this morning. 

That added time, while it seems nice to have on the surface, can wreak havoc with our modern technology systems. In 2012, the extra second caused so much confusion that it crashed Reddit, among other systems. 

The recent speeding-up of the Earth’s rotation complicates things further. If we keep going at this rate, it could result in the world’s first ever “negative second”. If you thought our technology systems struggled with added time, there are a lot of sciency brains who are very worried about the impact of taking time away. One of those concerns being… it’s never been done before.  

So, what’s The Time-Keeper’s solution? Invent more time! Woooo. 

Starting next May, the leap second will be replaced with a "leap hour," allowing UTC to diverge from Earth's rotation by up to an hour before a correction is made.  None of us will get to experience that extra hour in our lifetimes, but our Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great grandchildren are going to have one hell of a party. 

For us current mortals, we’re all getting a little less time, and we’re hurtling through space a little faster. Happy Thursday! 

But I guess I do want to make the point that I’m glad the risk has been thoroughly assessed ahead of, ahem, time. The Time-Keepers have decided that the world’s infrastructure should not have to find out how it handles a missing second by collectively experiencing one.  

And I don’t even want to think about how all the AIs would cope with a negative second… 

There’s something here for incident response planning. “It’s never happened before” is an excellent reason to test whether you’re ready for it. Run the exercise. Find out which part of your plan depends on something that, in this scenario, is also broken. Preferably before an adversary gets to supervise the practical demonstration. 

Now, if only the Time-Keepers can abolish Daylight Savings Time next... 

The one big thing  

Two unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) flaws were discovered in PHP, rocking the internet. Dubbed "php2shell" and triggered by a simple HTTP request, this vulnerability affects every build since 5.4. Talos assesses that all industries running PHP applications are at risk for exploitation if systems remain unpatched.

Why do I care? 

PHP runs WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Shopware, WooCommerce, and many other ubiquitous internet staples, so the possible blast radius is enormous. Older branches are end of life (EOL) and will not receive patches; these could account for around 50% of use cases.

So now what? 

Cisco customers are covered with the Cisco Talos Network Intrusion Prevention (SNORT®) signatures 67359 and 67360. If your organization is running PHP 8.1 or older, Talos very strongly advises immediate update to PHP 8.2 or later. There is no patch for PHP 8.1 or older. See the article for more specific coverage and detection guidance.

See an interview with Nick Biasini on php2shell defense:

Top security headlines of the week 

'PHP2Shell' Bugs Signal Red Alert for Security Industry
Security teams are scrambling to remediate two critical PHP vulnerabilities following leaked details and reports of exploitation attempts. (Dark Reading)

INC and The Gentlemen Ransomware Affiliates expose 8,257 AI messages
SOCRadar has found seven exposed servers linked to INC and The Gentlemen ransomware affiliates, holding AI chats, stolen credentials and 46 encryptor builds. (Hack Read) 

The AI hacking apocalypse is not inevitable
While large language models present real risks to society, experts say they can be tested and largely controlled using well-worn cybersecurity and policy choices. (Cyberscoop)

‘Context Bombs’ Cut AI Attack Success by Misleading Agents With Fake Targets
Deceptive prompts lure AI agents into decoys and dead ends, cutting attack success by up to 91% in tests and raising the cost of a successful attack 23-fold.(SecurityWeek) 

Can’t get enough Talos? 

Compromised eMudhra intermediate certificates
Cisco Talos is aware of eight intermediate certificates belonging to the intermediate certificate authority, eMudhra.

Parasitizing trust: How legitimate infrastructure becomes a delivery pipeline for attackers
Adversaries are turning the tools businesses trust into delivery mechanisms for malicious activity. Cisco Talos observed abuse of more than 25 legitimate platforms over the past year, exploiting the built-in trust of collaboration, file-sharing, payment and other services to reach their targets.

There's only so much code: the rise in vulnerability numbers
The September Microsoft Patch Tuesday release included 975 vulnerability advisories. This month, 1,415 vulnerabilities were just dropped. Compared to a pre-June average of 100 a month, that increase is staggering. Where did they come from? And what does the future look like?

Upcoming events where you can find Talos 

• CAMLIS (Oct. 21 – 23) Arlington, VA 
• SecurityOnion Conference (Oct. 23) Augusta, GA 
• BsidesAugusta (Oct. 24) Augusta, GA 
• SAINTCON (Oct. 26 – 30) Provo, UT 
• CYBERWARCON (Nov. 20) Arlington, VA 
• AVAR 2026 (Dec. 2 – 4) Hyderabad, India 
• Black Hat Europe (Dec. 7 – 10) London, U.K. 

Most prevalent malware files from Talos telemetry over the past week  

SHA256: 9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507
MD5: 2915b3f8b703eb744fc54c81f4a9c67f
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507
Example Filename:sample.exe
Detection Name: W32.9F1F11A708-100.SBX.TG

SHA256: 7fc50b69b56bfdfa9fc0a3e088ff13904587d6336a51e9edcc7919cba83d4e3f
MD5: cca616647db9370c88998ae25da6997f
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=7fc50b69b56bfdfa9fc0a3e088ff13904587d6336a51e9edcc7919cba83d4e3f
Example Filename:cca616647db9370c88998ae25da6997f.exe
Detection Name: Win.Tool.Kmsauto::1201

SHA256: 985c3972712218c62d2418b41056dba5fe883ca5104d8ec12041f8611db344f9
MD5: 485055033bcddfde56325c0d2feea4f2
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=985c3972712218c62d2418b41056dba5fe883ca5104d8ec12041f8611db344f9
Example Filename:485055033bcddfde56325c0d2feea4f2.exe
Detection Name: Win.Tool.Kmsauto::1201

SHA256: d921fc993574c8be76553bcf4296d2851e48ee39b958205e69bdfd7cf661d2b1
MD5: 0c883b1d66afce606d9830f48d69d74b
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=d921fc993574c8be76553bcf4296d2851e48ee39b958205e69bdfd7cf661d2b1
Example Filename:d921fc993574c8be76553bcf4296d2851e48ee39b958205e69bdfd7cf661d2b1.exe
Detection Name: Win.Worm.Zard::95.sbx.tg

• For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, eight Cisco Talos researchers share practical ways defenders can frustrate adversaries at different stages of an operation.
• Deception techniques such as honeypot accounts, false infrastructure, and tarpits can slow adversaries down while giving defenders earlier opportunities to detect their activity.
• Behavioral detections, tighter control of legitimate remote-management tools, and clear boundaries around AI agents can make essential adversary actions more visible and easier to interrupt.
• Breaking dependencies between stages of an operation can prevent an adversary from reaching their next objective.

Years ago, Cisco Talos blocked an adversary’s command-and-control (C2) traffic. The adversary responded by tweeting, “Write a rule for your a**.”

A fine endorsement of our work, if I’ve ever heard one. 

Talos loves to see an adversary forced to change course. And if every alternative for them is slower, less stealthy, less reliable and more expensive? Chef’s kiss.

Adversaries rely on certain advantages. They look for environments where tools and infrastructure allow them to blend in with normal activity. They also look for employees who can be pressured into acting before they have time to think.

Strong cybersecurity defenses can change those conditions. They take away adversary choices and increase the risk attached to essential actions, forcing them to keep making new decisions. Each change of plan costs them time and resources, and may eventually cause them to give up and move to another target.

It also creates more opportunities for defenders to spot what they are doing.

For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re exploring “the fine art of frustrating the adversary.” To kick us off, I asked researchers across Talos, covering all aspects of the attack chain, for the strongest recommendation they could give defenders to seriously frustrate a potential adversary in their environment, and what that action would prevent the adversary from doing next.

Take away their choices

Many adversaries use techniques that succeed against a large number of organizations. This makes a lot of economic sense: An operation that depends on every potential target having an unusual configuration will not scale particularly well.

But it also creates an opportunity for defenders.

“By being unique and setting things up a little differently, you may be able to better defend your environment when they come knocking,” Pierre says.

For example, organizations can restrict which accounts are permitted to sign into their most critical servers, alert on connection attempts from unauthorized users, and closely monitor any changes to those restrictions. Different credentials or authentication methods can be required for particularly sensitive systems, while protected enclaves can provide increased monitoring around critical infrastructure.

Pierre also recommends that defenders “monitor (and alert) for any changes to administrative users or administrative groups.”

Of course, no amount of security measures makes an organization impenetrable, but they can make the common methods adversaries use much less dependable. 

Deception can push that uncertainty even further.

“Affecting the attack earlier rather than later in the attack chain is best,” Martin says. “Better to stop an attack from happening than minimize the consequences after it has happened.”

Martin suggests creating honeypot email accounts using expired domains with addresses that have previously leaked, or developing fictional employee profiles and seeding their addresses in places where spammers and other adversaries are likely to discover them. Because these accounts have no legitimate users, messages sent to them can be treated with far greater suspicion. The activity can provide early tactical intelligence about malicious infrastructure, lures, and campaigns, allowing defenders to put protections in place before the same operation reaches genuine employees.

Martin signed off with this note: “Have fun creating some fake employees and executives.”

Nick sees a similar role for tarpits and other forms of deception.

“False servers, shares, user accounts and network space can all be used to confuse and slow down the attacker while providing opportunities for the defender to detect them,” he says.

The same principle is beginning to appear in attempts to slow automated systems.

“We’ve even seen some new movement in the tarpit space for slowing down AI by throwing huge amounts of incoherent text at scrapers to slow them down,” Nick explains.

Deception gives the adversary another problem: they can no longer be certain that what they have found is useful, or even real. 

Plus, it can be a lot of fun.

Detect what they cannot avoid

“Attackers have enormous flexibility in how they operate, but far less flexibility in what they ultimately need to accomplish,” Ryan says. “Good detection engineering exploits that asymmetry.”

Consider an adversary attempting to obtain privileged credentials. They might use Mimikatz, comsvcs.dll, direct access to LSASS memory, a custom utility or another implementation entirely. A detection focused too narrowly on one tool can be bypassed simply by replacing it. A detection built around the underlying attempt to access credential material leaves considerably less room to maneuver.

According to Ryan, creating resilient behavioral detections requires defenders to:

• Identify the adversary techniques that would have the greatest impact in their environment
• Understand the different procedures an adversary could use to perform them;
• Find the behaviors that remain consistent when the tooling, syntax, or implementation changes
• Build analytics that account for techniques such as encoding, transformation, and obfuscation

This is more involved than matching a known tool or indicator. It requires suitable telemetry, knowledge of normal activity in the organization, and detection engineering that reflects how adversaries operate in practice.

“If done right, it forces an attacker into a dilemma: either abandon the objective, choose a noisier/less reliable path, or execute the action and risk detection,” Ryan says. “It is the highest leverage investment for defenders as well, because behavior-based detection is tool-agnostic.”

Ryan also points out that organizations do not need to begin from scratch. MITRE ATT&CK provides a useful taxonomy of adversary techniques, while projects such as MITRE Center for Threat-Informed Defense’s Summiting the Pyramid, SpecterOps’ work on capability abstraction, Splunk SURGe’s Macro ATT&CK, and Cisco Foundation AI’s LUCID explore different parts of this challenge.

Control the tools they hope to use

Sometimes the most useful tool available to an adversary is one that already has a legitimate purpose within the target environment. Remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools are a good example. Organizations use RMM software to administer systems and maintain remote access. Ransomware operators can use the same capabilities to establish persistence and interact with compromised systems before encryption.

“These are good tools that are being used for bad, making them not good in your environment but not bad for everyone,” Michael says. “So are they good or not good? Well, that depends on your specific environment.”

Warlock ransomware, for example, has used Zoho Unattended Agent. The tool can provide a remote technician with elevated permissions even when the signed-in user is not an administrator, offering the adversary persistence and a relatively benign-looking route to greater privileges.

Defenders can frustrate this activity by first inventorying the RMM products that are genuinely authorized in their environment. Application allowlisting can then permit those approved products while blocking (or producing high-confidence alerts for) unapproved tools such as AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, or Atera. Controls can be enforced through technologies such as Windows Defender Application Control, AppLocker, or endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms.

Removing access to a familiar RMM product forces the adversary to establish persistence or C2 another way. That change does not guarantee that the operation ends, but it creates friction and another chance to detect the activity before the ransomware encryptor is deployed.

Slow them down

“Attackers use urgency to create panic and to try and trick users into making bad decisions in the heat of the moment,” says Doug.

Email, text message, and in-person scams frequently manufacture that urgency. A bill must be cancelled immediately. An executive stranded overseas needs help now. A child has been injured and the recipient must call the number in the message. The adversary always wants you to act first and think later.

From a social engineering perspective, Doug recommends considering which events in your work or personal life would genuinely require you to drop everything and respond immediately. For most people, that list should be relatively short. Then consider how you would realistically expect to learn about each situation, what action you might need to take and how you could independently verify that it was real.

“If you messed up your taxes, you probably don’t expect to get a single email from the IRS, and you almost certainly don’t expect the IRS needs gift cards or other forms of payment,” Doug says.

If a text claimed that your child had been injured at school, you could call the number you already have for the school rather than relying on the contact details supplied in the message.

Doug recommends thinking through genuine emergencies in advance to make it easier to recognize when someone is trying to manufacture one. It also provides a verification route that does not depend on trusting the message itself.

Make every agent session identifiable and interruptible

As organizations increasingly introduce AI agents with access to tools and applications across connected systems, defenders need to know which agent is responsible for each action, and be able to stop it.

“The best way to frustrate an agentic adversary is to make every agent session identifiable, restricted, and interruptible,” David says.

A recent Anthropic report described four real-world incidents involving Claude in evaluation environments. The organizations involved were not named, but the incidents shared a common weakness: the environments had inadvertently been given internet access.

These were not conventional adversary operations and the agents had not been directed to behave maliciously. Their significance lies in what happened once the agents began operating beyond their intended boundaries.

The reported activity crossed trusted services, relays, and short-lived infrastructure before reaching cloud metadata, Kubernetes, VPN, source-control, and data-staging systems. An agent capable of adapting its behavior can change destinations, reuse public services, and connect information or systems in ways its operators did not anticipate.

“A simple IP or domain blocklist would not have been enough,” David says.

Instead, David recommends that each agent run should have its own identity and short-lived credentials, with traffic routed through an independent gateway. Access to cloud metadata, Kubernetes interfaces, and other sensitive systems should be blocked unless the agent genuinely requires it.

Defenders should also look for actions that indicate an agent is moving beyond its intended role, including:

• Unexpected writes to package registries, datasets, wikis, paste sites, or file-sharing services
• Repository creation, dataset commits, and unusual API operations 
• Calls to Kubernetes APIs, VPN services and DNS-over-HTTPS relays
• Public services being used as C2 channels or dead drops
• Credential discovery followed by activity across cloud accounts or source-control platforms
• Rapid destination changes, DNS pinning, short-lived egress identities, and unusual bursts of traffic

These controls constrain what happens after an agent takes an unexpected action. Giving each session a traceable identity makes its behavior easier to attribute. Allowlisting limits where it can go. Independent gateways provide a place to observe and stop the activity.

“This is practical today,” David says. “It makes the agent’s next move slower, louder, and much easier to stop.”

Break up their route

Conventional malware operations also depend on connections that may be hidden inside services an organization would not ordinarily consider malicious. An attack chain can involve multiple tools and pieces of infrastructure. Somewhere within it may be a dependency that connects one stage to the next.

“I cannot say with certainty which action is most effective at frustrating an adversary, but I would imagine it is discovering a dependency in the chain that, once blocked, cannot be easily replaced,” Vanja says.

Vanja encountered this while analyzing two attack chains that used the Amatera information stealer as their primary payload.

In the first, the adversary used a page hosted on the legitimate Telegra.ph publishing platform to conceal the location of its C2 server. This technique, known as a C2 dead-drop resolver, allows an adversary to place C2 information on a popular legitimate service that web-filtering systems may be less inclined to block or inspect closely.

Once defenders identify and block the particular page containing that information, the handoff is interrupted. Amatera might already be running on the endpoint, but if it cannot determine where its C2 server is, it cannot receive collection instructions or download additional payloads.

The second chain used the same primary payload but included different secondary payloads, among them the cryptocurrency stealer ZigCryptoStealer. This malware stored its C2 domain in the metadata of a BNB Smart Chain contract — an approach commonly known as EtherHiding.

Blocking one contract does not stop an adversary from deploying another. It does break the existing operation and force them to spend time and money rebuilding part of their infrastructure.

The appropriate response depends on how the organization uses the underlying service. Known malicious domains and URLs can generally be blocked through DNS filtering, secure web gateways, proxies, or firewalls. Published indicators can also be added to existing security tools.

Contract-specific blocking is more complicated because defenders need visibility into blockchain remote procedure call requests and a means of distinguishing one contract from other traffic. If the organization has no legitimate requirement to access public blockchain or RPC infrastructure, blocking it may be the simpler option. Where the technology is required, defenders can allow approved services and monitor access to known contracts.

The main requirements are visibility, timely threat intelligence, and the ability to turn that intelligence into enforcement rules. Even partial disruption can increase the cost and complexity of the operation.

“It is particularly satisfying when a single point of failure is identified because it forces a threat actor to re-establish infrastructure, which can take time and money,” Vanja says. “In other words, the simpler the mitigation, the more satisfied we can be.” 

Keep them on their toes

No single action in this article will frustrate every adversary or stop every attack, nor will every recommendation be equally appropriate for every environment. But the common pattern is the same: Make the adversary’s next move harder, riskier, or less reliable. If you can get them to swear at you on Twitter, even better.

It comes down to setting your environment up to detect the behaviors that their objectives require. Know when a tool is being used for something it shouldn’t be. Slow down the moments designed to make people panic. Give every agent session an identity, boundaries, and a reliable off switch. Find the dependencies connecting one stage of an operation to the next.

Frustrating an adversary means making them find another account, another tool, another route, another piece of infrastructure, or another way to make someone act.

Eventually, the easier target may be somewhere else.

For more insights into current cybercrime behavior, take a listen of this episode of Beers with Talos:

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter. 

Our goal is to get accurate threat intelligence to our audience as quickly as possible, with all the context you need to ask the right questions of your own environment: How at risk are we from this threat? Are we prepared for it? And what can we do about it? 

What you don’t often see is all the... well, frankly, “mess” involved in producing it. All the dead ends we followed until we could confirm those ends were as dead as a doornail. All the work it took to ultimately produce an assessment, supported by evidence and written so that defenders can act on it. 

Much of that abstraction is necessary. Defenders need intelligence they can use, not a complete account of every conversation we had, or investigative detour behind it. But it can create an overly tidy picture of both cybercrime and the work required to understand it. 

If you do fancy a look behind the curtain, though, may I recommend our just-published episode of Beers with Talos? 

Our guest is Azim Khodjibaev, whose remit is adversary engagement. His work involves developing personas for deep- and dark-web research, engaging directly with threat actors, and building relationships with people who may become (and have been) openly threatening to him. 

At one point, he was maintaining eight separate personas, some of which were interacting with one another. Azim’s engagements have helped Talos identify prolific cybercriminals and contributed to wider disruption efforts. They have also resulted in ransomware operators placing “Azim sucks” in their code and accusing him of belonging to the very criminal groups he was investigating. 

His experiences also expose the problem with treating adversaries as uniformly sophisticated operators. Some are technically capable and highly organised. Others are impulsive, ego-driven, or one-trick ponies. Many have a scary detachment from the consequences of their actions. Increasingly, Azim is seeing less-experienced threat actors working through loosely organised online collectives.  

Intelligence necessarily turns that disorder into something defenders can understand and use. But occasionally, it is worth looking behind the finished product – the patience it takes to get accurate answers, who we are investigating, and the deeply human behaviour that shapes both sides. 

This Beers with Talos episode, “Eight People Walk Into a Dark Web Forum. They’re All Azim,” isn’t exactly going to help many people in our industry sleep better at night. But for anyone wanting to understand more about the threat we’re up against, as a co-host of the pod I’m biased, but I believe it’s an essential listen. 

And if that doesn’t inspire you to download the episode, perhaps my live review of trying Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for the very first time (with a chaser of Nerds) will. 

The one big thing  

Cisco Talos is highlighting a growing operational hurdle for security teams that we call the AI "safety penalty." As frontier AI models advance, their built-in guardrails are increasingly blocking legitimate defensive tasks. This was evident in July 2026 when Hugging Face's primary cloud LLM refused to analyze forensic data during a breach, delaying their response. While defenders are slowed by these frustrating refusals, adversaries are freely leveraging unconstrained models to attack at machine speed.  

Why do I care? 

This guardrail asymmetry hands the advantage directly to attackers. When a cloud-hosted AI model refuses a forensic request mid-incident, defenders lose precious time. Security teams are paying for vendor-imposed limitations without gaining a capability edge, especially as open-weight alternatives close the reasoning gap. Ultimately, relying on third-party alignment policies means a sudden update in Silicon Valley could quietly break your defensive workflows overnight.  

So now what? 

Security leadership must reclaim operational sovereignty by ensuring they have the final say over their AI's capabilities. Start by auditing your AI refusal rates to measure the exact cost of this safety penalty. From there, evaluate alternative architectures like private infrastructure, Model-as-a-Service platforms, or a hybrid fallback system that reroutes refused prompts to an unconstrained local model. Read the full blog to explore these roadmaps and learn how to keep pace with adversaries. 

Top security headlines of the week 

ShinyHunters claims it stole 284 million patient records from McKesson 
ShinyHunters told BleepingComputer and said it got in through vishing calls to McKesson employees, then used stolen credentials to take over Okta single sign-on accounts. (Help Net Security) 

Anthropic warns Claude users of infostealer malware infections 
Anthropic emphasized that the malware is general-purpose and not tied to Claude itself, typically arriving via unofficial downloads or malicious apps. The company said the malware quietly copies saved passwords, browser login cookies, and credentials for other local applications. (Security Week) 

EU puts ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox under stricter DSA rules 
The DSA establishes rules governing areas including platform transparency, illegal content, advertising, researcher access, recommender systems, and systemic-risk management. (CyberInsider) 

PaperCut issues emergency patches as threat actors target chained vulnerabilities 
PaperCut issued the patches on Friday to address critical vulnerabilities in its print-management software. The company confirmed in a security advisory that multiple customers were successfully targeted and that it is working with security researchers to respond to the attacks. (Cybersecurity Dive) 

Can’t get enough Talos? 

JavaScript obfuscation: From party trick to phishing kit
We've spent a lot of time pulling apart suspicious JavaScript from phishing kits, malware packages, compromised sites, and more. Learn the basics of what obfuscation is, why a researcher would try to reverse it, and several ways to approach the problem. 

Choose your fighter: Balancing competing AI SOC model requirements 
Selecting a model for your security operations center (SOC) and digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) tasks is important, but selecting the best one is more involved than you might think. Here's how to choose. 

Beers with Talos: Eight people walk into a dark web forum. They're all Azim.
What does it take to become someone a cybercriminal will trust? Talos' Azim Khodjibaev takes us inside the psychology of direct adversary engagement. At one point, he was maintaining eight different personas, some of which were talking to each other. He explains how discipline and patience help keep his cover intact, and what can provoke threat actors into revealing information.

Upcoming events where you can find Talos 

• International European Cyber Threat Intelligence Conference (IECTIC) (Sept. 9) Kassel, Germany 
• Secure Iowa (Sept. 9) Altoona, IA 
• .conf26 (Sept. 14 – 17) Denver, CO 
• LABSCon (Sept. 16 – 19) Scottsdale, AZ 
• VB (Oct. 14 – 16) Seville, Spain 
• CAMLIS (Oct. 21 – 23) Arlington, VA 

Most prevalent malware files from Talos telemetry over the past week 

SHA256: 9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507  
MD5: 2915b3f8b703eb744fc54c81f4a9c67f  
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507 
Example Filename: VID001.exe  
Detection Name: W32.9F1F11A708-100.SBX.TG** 

SHA256: 228c316455d5ed69232adcbe9acd033092f200014cfa7ed40d6c382f07b19b82  
MD5: 61e046145ee5cf45aeb033cd71e8b07c  
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=228c316455d5ed69232adcbe9acd033092f200014cfa7ed40d6c382f07b19b82 
Example Filename: NetGuard.exe  
Detection Name: W32.228C316455-95.SBX.TG 

SHA256: a31f222fc283227f5e7988d1ad9c0aecd66d58bb7b4d8518ae23e110308dbf91  
MD5: 7bdbd180c081fa63ca94f9c22c457376  
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=a31f222fc283227f5e7988d1ad9c0aecd66d58bb7b4d8518ae23e110308dbf91 
Example Filename: d4aa3e7010220ad1b458fac17039c274_62_Exe.exe  
Detection Name: Win.Dropper.Miner::95.sbx.tg** 

SHA256: c4dd71e347a076ba24bdd2d0ee532ef991c1ef25a2431a19f850942ba2ab16b2  
MD5: 9a47c4d379998ade2f8f99e23a630c06  
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=c4dd71e347a076ba24bdd2d0ee532ef991c1ef25a2431a19f850942ba2ab16b2 
Example Filename: sample.exe  
Detection Name: W32.C4DD71E347-95.SBX.TG 

SHA256: 38d053135ddceaef0abb8296f3b0bf6114b25e10e6fa1bb8050aeecec4ba8f55  
MD5: 41444d7018601b599beac0c60ed1bf83  
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=38d053135ddceaef0abb8296f3b0bf6114b25e10e6fa1bb8050aeecec4ba8f55 
Example Filename: content.js  
Detection Name: W32.38D053135D-95.SBX.TG 

SHA256: 9896a6fcb9bb5ac1ec5297b4a65be3f647589adf7c37b45f3f7466decd6a4a7f  
MD5: 38de5b216c33833af710e88f7f64fc98  
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=9896a6fcb9bb5ac1ec5297b4a65be3f647589adf7c37b45f3f7466decd6a4a7f 
Example Filename: SECOH-QAD.exe  
Detection Name: Win.Tool.Procpatcher::1201

Cybersecurity has always involved elements of uncertainty. Every day, security teams are asked to make decisions with incomplete information, while attackers rely on defenders not being able to see the full picture.

What defenders haven't always had to deal with is attackers using AI to rewrite malicious commands on the fly, malware that adapts its code upon every installation, and models that can search through decades of vulnerable code and exposed interfaces to uncover new opportunities for exploitation.

While none of that changes the fundamental purpose of cybersecurity — to understand and act on what's happening in your environment — it does make that picture harder and harder to build. Is a newly registered domain part of an attack? Is that outbound connection normal? Is that user behavior unusual? 

Cisco Talos Intelligence Integrations helps answer those questions.

Across Cisco’s security and enterprise technologies, Talos’ reputation and detection integrations continuously apply the latest threat intelligence to identify and block malicious activity.

Our latest video introduces some of the Talosians behind the integrations and explains how they work.

If you'd like to learn more about the technologies behind Talos Intelligence Integrations, you'll find a more detailed overview on the Cisco Security website.

Welcome to this week’s Threat Source newsletter. 

There’s a fairly cliché phrase in cybersecurity that I’m sure our audience is familiar with: Attackers only need to be right once, whereas defenders need to be right 100% of the time.  

I guess it captures the asymmetry of this industry, but I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the phrase because it assumes cybersecurity is a game of perfection. One mistake and it's over.  

I’ve been watching a lot of Wimbledon this week, as I have done since childhood. In fact, I believe my first words were, “C’mon Tim!” (For our non-U.K. audience, I’m referring to tennis player Tim Henman, who made four Wimbledon semi-finals in the late 90s and early 2000s and has a hill in the Wimbledon grounds named after him).  

Of the “big three” (or the “big four” if you’re Scottish), my favourite was always Rafa Nadal, but I have to admit there’s no one who could deliver a one-handed backhand quite like Roger Federer. I bet that when he swats at a fly, the fly apologises and claps its wings. 

As I saw him sitting in the Royal Box entirely on his own this week, watching tennis out of pure love of the game while everyone else scoffed their strawberries and cream in the comfort of hospitality, I remembered the commencement speech he gave at Dartmouth a couple of years ago. He told the students that, across his entire career, he won 80% of his matches.  

But of all the total points he played, he won 54% of them.  

Tennis is a long game (no one can tell you that more than Novak Djokovic and Felix Auger Aliassime who just played the longest quarter final in Wimbledon’s history last night). And, mathematically in tennis, you can lose more points and overall games than your opponent and still win the match. Which point you win matters more than the total amount of points you win.  

If you go to the IBM SlamTracker right now, you’ll see all sorts of stats around when players choose to attack, how often they successfully convert those attacking positions into points, and how often they win points they looked destined to lose (the “steal” score). 

Tennis is hundreds of small decisions: When to attack, when to defend, when to be patient, when to let the point develop. Not all of those decisions pan out because, well, you’re playing against an opponent who’s also making decisions within the point… and not a brick wall. 

In the SOC, it’s also about making thousands of judgement calls, using whatever hand you’re dealt. And with more context, you’re able to know your environment better and make better decisions. You can test more assumptions and follow a hypothesis that might lead somewhere, or nowhere at all. 

Because that’s the job, and perfection is a myth. 

The one big thing 

Cisco Talos’ latest findings on the China-nexus threat actor UAT-7810 shows they are expanding their Operational Relay Box (ORB) networks with a fresh suite of custom malware. The group exploits known vulnerabilities in unpatched Ruckus and ASUS routers to deploy new tools, including the upgraded "LONGLEASH" and "DOGLEASH" backdoors. UAT-7810 builds these covert networks to provide infrastructure for other APT groups to launch attacks against high-value targets. 

Why do I care? 

ORB networks create a massive blind spot. They allow secondary threat actors to mask their origins and route malicious traffic through seemingly innocuous nodes. By compromising edge devices like wireless routers, UAT-7810 builds a highly evasive, decentralized proxy network that easily bypasses traditional perimeter defenses. The active development of sophisticated, multi-platform tools like LONGLEASH shows this group is heavily investing in making their infrastructure incredibly resilient and hard to dismantle. 

So now what? 

Because UAT-7810 relies on exploiting n-day vulnerabilities, defenders must ensure all edge devices, particularly Ruckus and ASUS routers, are fully patched. Monitor network traffic for unusual proxying behavior or unauthorized connections on devices that typically lack complex services. The blog post has a complete list of IOCs to help detect and block this malware suite. 

Top security headlines of the week 

The “first” AI-run ransomware attack still needed a human 
Researchers at cloud security firm Sysdig said they’d documented the first known case of “agentic ransomware.” (The encryption was non-reversible — essentially a wiper, not ransomware.) A human provided compromised credentials, provisioned the command-and-control server, the staging server used for the stolen data, chose a victim, and more. (TechCrunch) 

AirDrop and Quick Share flaws let nearby attackers trigger crashes and bypass checks  
Two researchers have found six security flaws in AirDrop and Quick Share. An attacker within wireless range, with just a laptop and no prior connection, can crash the sharing service on a Mac or iPhone set to receive from anyone, with no tap or prompt. (The Hacker News) 

Hidden backdoor in Tenda router firmware grants admin access 
A hidden authentication backdoor has been found in multiple Tenda router firmware versions, potentially allowing an attacker to gain administrative access to the device's web management panel. According to the CERT Coordination Center, the issue remains unfixed because the maker couldn't be reached. (BleepingComputer) 

State IDs for AI agents: Will Estonia set a precedent? 
Estonia's government will soon assign official government ID numbers to AI agents. The point is to enable organizations and individuals to use AI when engaging government systems, but in a way that's limited and auditable. (Dark Reading) 

Can’t get enough Talos? 

Space pirates, Living Off Trusted Services, and Bill declares food war  
The team discusses how Living Off Trusted Services (LOTS) differs from Living Off the Land (LOTL) (and Lord of the Rings (LOTR]), why trusted services create new detection challenges, and what defenders should be monitoring. 

ARToken: Inside an EvilTokens affiliate panel targeting Microsoft 365 
Talos has identified "ARToken," a phishing-as-a-service platform that targets Microsoft 365. The ARToken panel exposes 80+ API endpoints for device code phishing, Primary Refresh Token persistence, email access, BEC operations, and SharePoint exfiltration. 

Martin Lee: Running through the Arctic (and the threat landscape) 
Ever wonder how someone goes from studying human viruses to leading cybersecurity teams? How about running through the Arctic for fun?  In this Humans of Talos you get to hear from Martin and that’s ALWAYS worth pulling up a seat. 

Upcoming events where you can find Talos 

• Black Hat USA (Aug. 1 – 6) Las Vegas, NV 
• DEF CON 34 (Aug. 6 – 9) Las Vegas, NV 

Most prevalent malware files from Talos telemetry over the past week 

SHA256: 9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507  
MD5: 2915b3f8b703eb744fc54c81f4a9c67f 
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=9f1f11a708d393e0a4109ae189bc64f1f3e312653dcf317a2bd406f18ffcc507 
Example Filename: VID001.exe 
Detection Name: Win.Worm.Coinminer::1201** 

SHA256: 621c6d42409e8aa423684827b4375a35684c71c600f2dd9101f235e8ec633488 
MD5: 9b512ba139304c247ddd3d2c4b9179fd 
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=621c6d42409e8aa423684827b4375a35684c71c600f2dd9101f235e8ec633488 
Example Filename: 9b512ba139304c247ddd3d2c4b9179fd.exe 
Detection Name: W32.HEUR:Attribute.28iy.1201 

SHA256: 9896a6fcb9bb5ac1ec5297b4a65be3f647589adf7c37b45f3f7466decd6a4a7f 
MD5: 38de5b216c33833af710e88f7f64fc98 
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=9896a6fcb9bb5ac1ec5297b4a65be3f647589adf7c37b45f3f7466decd6a4a7f 
Example Filename: SECOH-QAD.exe  
Detection Name: Win.Tool.Procpatcher::1201 

SHA256: afc8a00883a4ea07df2dc1d4ed02f8a23b35c9456413b438a2d9ce3ae5076638 
MD5: cc4d231df34e57f59eb970353c7d9de2 
Talos Rep: https://talosintelligence.com/talos_file_reputation?s=afc8a00883a4ea07df2dc1d4ed02f8a23b35c9456413b438a2d9ce3ae5076638 
Example Filename: sample.exe 
Detection Name: PUA.Win.Tool.Kmsactivator::1201