Guess who’s back? Hazel, Bill and Joe welcome back fresh-from-parental-leave Dave Liebenberg, who has returned with a new baby, and some truly chaotic Thanksgiving opinions.    

We kick things off with the security headlines. Joe gets spicy about a recent “AI-orchestrated cyber campaign” report.  Dave brings us the poetic news that AI models can apparently be jailbroken with a well-placed limerick. Hazel challenges the others to a guessing game about just how much cyberattacks cost the UK, and Bill discusses what’s top of mind for organizations right now.  

But really, you know what you’re here for: the annual RanksGiving extravaganza. Dave boldly ranks his top five Thanksgiving dishes (with a new twist for this year, because apparently we need to re-engage the ‘youth’ before they’re lost to TikTok forever.) Cue the outrage, the gravy discourse, and a heartfelt (touching on amorous) defense of gluttony from Bill.  

Happy holidays everyone! May your gravy be thick and your cyber incidents few. See you in 2026! 

Talos' Vice President Christopher Marshall (the “real Marshall,” much to Joe’s displeasure) joins Hazel, Bill, and Joe for a very real conversation about leading people when the world won’t stop moving. We start with Marshall’s days in the Navy’s nuclear program and the art of translating deeply technical work for non-technical leaders. We then get into how he joined Talos (“you WILL do this for me”), why being right beats being first, and how to keep a team steady and mission focussed when the news cycle is anything but. Marshall also talks about the decisions that shaped his life and career, what he’s had to let go of as he’s moved up, and the gloriously nerdy hobbies that keep him grounded.

This week, the B-Team gets an upgrade as we’re joined by Sara McBroom from Talos’ nation-state threat intelligence and interdiction team. Sara shares her journey from a liberal arts major to tracking some of the world’s most advanced adversaries. Along the way, she talks about moving from the U.S federal service to Talos, mentoring, leading with empathy, and why making bad actors miserable is a pretty good day’s work.

Before diving into Sara’s story, we hit the security headlines (ouch) and also discuss a Dutch hacker camp with flaming badges and port-a-potty internet. But from 17 minutes in, it’s all about Sara — her path, her research (Static Tundra, anyone?), and how she leads her team without micromanaging.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to ruin an APT’s day for a living, this is the episode.

Here's the research that Bill mentioned: "Psychopathia Machinalis: A Nosological Framework for Understanding Pathologies in Advanced Artificial Intelligence" https://www.psychopathia.ai

We welcome new Talos teammate and incident commander Alex Ryan to the pod this week. Bill, Joe and Hazel chat with Alex about what it really takes to lead through the chaos of a cybersecurity incident, from coordinating stressed-out teams, fielding exec questions, and making sure people eat.

Much to Bill's dismay, we have something resembling a "format" for this episode, and we start by breaking down the week's security news, including:

• The SharePoint zero-day exploit (“ToolShell”) and what defenders should do now. Here's the Talos blog we mention https://blog.talosintelligence.com/toolshell-affecting-sharepoint-servers/
• An AI assistant gone rogue — and how a consultant lost thousands of databases in his sleep.
• Everything Talos has got going on at Black Hat

We then ask Alex more about her career story, including what it’s like breaking into security from a philosophy degree. We also have some honest talk about making mistakes, women in cyber, and why we need to keep mid-career women in tech. 

Want to meet Talos at Black Hat? Come find us at the Cisco booth, play Backdoors & Breaches over lunch with us, and hear the latest threat research. More details in this blog https://blog.talosintelligence.com/cisco-talos-at-black-hat-2025-briefings-booth-talks-and-what-to-expect/

Welcome back to the podcast where the structure is theoretical and the only certainty is uncertainty. In this episode, the crew reassembles after a totally intentional and not-at-all accidental hiatus (blame is assigned, forgiveness is not).

We cover:

• AI-assisted IVF (spoiler: it's mostly robots and headlines)
• The dawning of Mind-games-as-a-service in ransomware operations
• Conference dogs that may have been the real security MVPs
• A possible underground war against dairy
• And the billionaires quietly building their own genetically-diversified endgame.

We also mourn Bill's departure as he abruptly quits the podcast after one pun too many.

As always, we make absolutely no guarantees that this episode makes any sense whatsoever. 

Joe, Hazel, Bill and Dave break down Talos' Year in Review 2024 and discuss how and why cybercriminals have been leaning so heavily on attacks that are routed in stealth in simplicity. The team also provide insights into some of the topics of the report, including the top-targeted vulnerabilities of the year, network-based attacks, adversary toolsets, identity attacks, multi-factor authentication (MFA) abuse, ransomware and AI-based attacks. 

For the full report, head to blog.talosintelligence.com/2024yearinreview

Bill springs a surprise topic on the team in this episode - how did you get into cybersecurity, and what skills have you brought with you throughout your career? What ensues is a rather lovely, vulnerable conversation that we hope will be helpful for anyone currently thinking about their next career move.

Before that Dave has some surprising facts about Tasmanian devils, what they didn't cover (or deliberately hid?) in Looney Tunes, and why the scientific name for Tasmanian devils is a hotly debated topic. 

Some resources for getting into cybersecurity:

Threat intelligence 101 with Cisco Talos

Diversity in cybersecurity: A mosaic of career opportunities

How to hire the best (an earlier episode of BWT that Bill references)

More hijinks and silliness ensue in the second episode of the BWT B Team podcast. Joe shares his frustration with being involuntarily removed from a social media platform, Hazel conducts a live experiment, Dave talks about his newfound addiction to crossword puzzles and its parallels to cybersecurity, and Bill recommends the game "Nine Lives" and shares his top books of the year. 

Joe also briefly chats about his work customizing a tabletop cybersecurity game for humanitarian organizations. And we do a shoutout to Talos’ research on vulnerable Windows drivers and  proxy chain abuse.

Find the latest research at https://blog.talosintelligence.com

With Mitch, Matt and Lurene currently stuck in the void, the Beers with Talos B team duly elect themselves to reopen the sacred BWT airwaves with their own brand of nonsense. 

Hazel, Joe, Bill and Dave each share the security rabbit hole they went down this week - from analyst in-jokes about AI, oligarchs and bad actors refusing to learn good op sec, the songs you'd play to send a message mid-hack, and the long awaited return of Turkey Lurkey Man, TM. Dave's insane creation is back with an exciting new take on Thanksgiving. 

For all the latest and greatest Talos research not featuring six degrees of Ally McBeal, head to https://blog.talosintelligence.com