Jon took a break from listening to “Red (Taylor’s Version)” to turn this podcast around quickly to align with our recent research on the Kimsuky APT. This North Korean state-sponsored actor is in the wild again targeting South Korean organizations that house potentially sensitive information. The group set up fake Blogger sites to lure in the victims to read about news related to nuclear disarmament and relations on the Korean peninsula, but instead were hit with infostealing malware. Assheer Malhotra, who helped research and write our latest blog, joins the show to discuss this group’s motivations, what information they may have been looking for, and how Talos helped put a stop to their actions.

We have another special extra large-sized version of Talos Takes this week. Enjoy this recording of a live stream we hosted earlier this week with Martin Lee from our Talos Communications team and Paul Lee from Cisco Talos Incident Response. The Lees discuss how to build the perfect Incident Response Plan. First, Martin walks through the basics of creating, editing and iterating on an IR plan. Then, he’s joined by Paul to ask him a few questions, take some Q&A from the audience and learn about Paul’s experience from the field.

This is a double special Talos Takes episode — it’s XL-sized and continues our Cybersecurity Awareness Month theme. This is a recording of our live stream from earlier this week with Brad Garnett, the general manager of Talos Incident Response. Even if you’ve never worked with an incident response team before, or have no idea what IR is, this is a perfect place to start. We provide the tl;dr of the IR process, talk building an IR plan and answer audience questions.

We continue our special series for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month by addressing everyone’s worst nightmare: phish. Who among us hasn’t gotten the call, “We’re trying to reach out about your car’s extended warranty?” In this Talos Takes, Jaeson Schultz, Talos’ foremost spam and phish expert, breaks down spam emails, phone calls and messages for any user. We discuss new trends we’re seeing from attackers in 2021, talk about the best software solutions available and give advice to Jon’s 77-year-old grandmother.

Everyone loves to talk and write about how tough it is that we are all working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. So for once — to celebrate National Cybersecurity Awareness Month — Talos Takes wants to talk about the positives! Christopher Marshall, the head of Talos’ detection research team, joins the show to discuss how he’s kept his team’s morale up during this time. Cybersecurity is a rough industry to be in, regardless of any external factors. So it’s important for him to avoid employee burnout and turnover. He and Jon also discuss the positives of working remotely, what they’re most looking forward to when they can go back into the office and their favorite pandemic-era hobbies.

Asheer Malhotra joins the show to once again cover a cyber attack in South Asia. This time, it’s an attacker that looks and smells like an APT, but may just be a run-of-the-mill crimeware gang. Asheer discusses he and his colleagues’ research into Operation: Armor Piercer, a campaign targeted at government agencies and military contractors. Needless to say, these are high-profile targets. Find out what this group wants and why they’re aping so much from other groups like Transparent Tribe and SideCopy.

Allow Vitor Ventura to take you on a journey of discovery, threat actors and attribution. He recently assisted with an investigation into a series of malware and spam campaigns using aviation-themed lures. These include fake flight itineraries, invoices and more. Vitor joins us on this week’s Talos Takes episode to discuss what he learned during this process, including how he connected the campaigns, what he learned (and couldn’t learn) about the actor behind them, and what he’ll take away into his next research. This is a great episode for anyone who is wondering about what kinds of pitfalls are out there for a security researcher.

Fresh off of translating an entire ransomware playbook from Russian to English, Azim and Dave from the Talos Threat Intelligence & Interdiction team join Talos Takes to talk about this project. They provide some first-hand insights into what this leaked playbook tells us about the Conti ransomware-as-a-service group. Threat actors — they have feelings just like us!

“Proxyware” sounds like a complicated topic that you’re too afraid to ask about. But really, it’s just software that allows users to sell off a portion of their internet bandwidth for a small profit. Problem is, attackers are swooping in on this popular software to spread malware and steal users’ money. Edmund Brumaghin joins the show this week to discuss his recent research into proxyware applications and how malware is hiding in plain sight. Edmund discusses why these types of apps are potentially unwanted applications, and what the threat is for enterprise users with remote workers, as well as personal PC users.