Beers with Talos Podcast

In this episode of Beers with Talos, Hazel, Bill, Dave and Joe are joined by Talos Security Research Engineer James Nutland to discuss Living Off Trusted Services (LOTS) - a growing technique where attackers use platforms such as GitHub, Google Drive, Microsoft services and Telegram for command and control, malware delivery and data exfiltration.We explore why this trend is growing, how it 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.Also in this episode:Data centers in space, when physics still has to physics.A USA vs UK Independence Day food showdown.Hazel faces another round of Make Hazel a Hacker.A new Reason Not to Quit looks at the latest successes from Operation Endgame.Bill gets his own corner.Here's the LOTS project repository mentioned in the episode https://lots-project.com/

Hazel, Dave and Joe plot to celebrate Bill's 25 years at Talos with stories and a good old fashioned roast.The team also covers the latest security headlines, including AI-assisted vulnerability research, and why attackers still can’t resist abusing trusted systems (or Roblox).They also break down the latest Cisco Talos Incident Response Quarterly Trends report, including:Phishing’s return as the top initial access vectorAI-generated credential harvesting pages built in minutesCrimson Collective activity and GitHub token exposurePre-ransomware incidents and early disruptionWhy logging (still) matters more than everRead the full report at https://blog.talosintelligence.com/ir-trends-q1-2026/And for more guidance for defenders, check out this episode of The Talos Threat Perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppL7JBshK8Plus: Crossbows, Metasploit nostalgia, and why, despite everything, security fundamentals still win.