Beers with Talos Podcast

Matt runs the ship this week in Mitch’s absence. Craig and Nigel are joined by Bill Largent and Joel was… in a meeting? The crew discusses ambulance chasing and crying wolf in the security industry and also what the security press is doing to perpetuate questionable reporting. We also chat at length about what exactly goes into vulnerability discovery, chaining exploits, and the months of work to get to those “12 seconds” of glory at Pwn2Own. Did we mention the internet ate our attempted episode last week? Sorry about that. We do our best to make up for missing a week this time. But man, that was a great episode you missed…

Off the top: Better late than never? On top of being distributed all around the planet this week, we had some technical issues with our recording platform. Matt’s audio remained a challenge; it is rough this week. Bear with us, the audio quality will be back to what you have come to expect next episode. If you would like to speak to the manager, please hold. The last several years have seen a continuing surge in booters, DDOS, and combined exploit campaigns for-hire coming out of Asia and other regions. What does this tell us about the continued “professionalization” of the cyber criminal enterprise? We also discuss “hacking back” - some say it should be legal. Most people who know what they are talking about seem to think otherwise.

The BlackHat/DEFCON recovery episode. This one may be a touch rough, with some great gems. We discuss why music in 1994 was so terrible, including a BWT rendition of some classic Ace of Bass. The FIRST tool is discussed in some detail, how using our IDA Pro plug-in saves time a reduces duplication of effort. A vital topic in this EP is Matt’s post “On Conveying Doubt” how can intel professionals couch our findings in the appropriate amount of certainty. We discuss Warren’s amazing shorts ad nauseam (thanks Sammi for the submission!!) and also talk about ClamAV 0.99.3 release and what you’ll find inside. Main topic - what is the value in the mega-cons? Are they getting too big? Has the value increased, decreased, or just changed with growth?

This is a special episode, we are joined by long-time friend of Talos, Dr. Adam J. O’Donnell, PhD. Adam is the founder/co-founder of many amazing technologies, including Immunet and had created the core technologies of many tools on the frontlines of cybe rwarfare. He gives us a candid look at his process in building security technologies, his interest in the arts, and why you should let him know about any heart conditions before going out for the evening. This is our last podcast before BlackHat and DEFCON as well - we have some great info on how to get catch Talos at Security Summer Camp 2017 as well a preview of the winning submission of the #ShortsForWarren competition. Poor, poor Warren. He made a bad decision letting us do this. Craig and Joel split time in this episode, because Joel had meetings and Craig was having a BBQ he didn’t invite us to.

Nyetya, NotPetya, PetrWrap, ExPetr, whatever you want to call it - although Nyetya is clearly the most clever name, not that Warren and I came up with it or anything - has wrecked havoc on the Ukraine and multinational companies doing business there. This episode takes a deep look at the threat, the vectors used, and how it worked. We also discuss how organizations can protect themselves from this and similar threats that we will likely see in the future. Feedback question: Send us links to the shorts Warren (@SecurityBeard) should wear the to Talos party at BlackHat. If we pick your submission, we will send you a Talos loot drop! Tweet us @TalosSecurity #Shorts4Warren or email beerswithtalos@cisco.com

Special guest and Talos team member Sean Baird comes by to discuss the Fake News Challenge - and the Talos team, Solat in the Swen, taking first place in stage 1. Nigel displays a disturbing lack of faith in Python. Joel and Matthew both provide an insane amount of valuable commentary compared to previous episodes. The part of Matthew Olney is being played by Kate Nolan. Joel Esler is being played by Dave Maynor. Feedback question: Why should we let Joel back on the podcast? Tweet us @TalosSecurity

The team discusses how to get into threat intel and join a team like Talos. There are many routes to enter the Talos, but no exits. Seriously, they won’t let me leave. Passwords, vaults, and other access controls are discussed more in-depth as well. Mitch opens the show discussing poor life choices like drinking with folks from Norn Iron, Nigel divulges details of his life-long obsession with men in shorts, Matt forces his team to endure war games in suburban Baltimore, Joel threatens to have a mental breakdown over buzzwords, and Craig turns his roundtable segment into a full topic…shocking, I know. Feedback question: What SHOULD Nigel be tweeting?Tweet us @TalosSecurity, use #BWT or email us BeerswithTalos@cisco.com.

The crew talks about the potential of Samba echoing WannaCry and blocking SMB ports (but you already did that, RIGHT?). Also, get a history lesson and proper usage guidance on words like 0-day, backdoor, and other terms that the industry loves to hype and abuse for extra clicks. Feedback question: What is stuck in Joel’s head? Tweet us @TalosSecurity or email us BeerswithTalos@cisco.com

Friday May 12 brought us the WannaCry/wcrypt ransomware worm. In this podcast dedicated entirely to WannaCry, Craig, Joel and Mitch are joined by Matt Olney, head of the threat intelligence group at Talos, and Warren Mercer, Talos Tech Lead. We discuss what we know so far and what we can expect to see in the near future.

Discussion around what’s real and what’s not with recent FCC decisions, FUD in the security press, ROKRAT hitting selected targets in South Korea, and if software itself can be illegal. Bonus topic: Mayor Joel was once a real thing.

Craig, Nigel, Joel and Mitch discuss spam resurgence via Necurs waking up, vuln dev in niche spaces, Crypt010cker, and hacking video games as a gateway drug for researchers.

Four guys from Talos talking about breaking IoT, responsible vulnerability disclosure, and finding new malware…written in Go.