Beers with Talos Podcast
by Cisco Talos
Listen to Talos security experts as they dive into emerging threats, forcing the bad guys to innovate, hacking refrigerators, and other security issues, all with beer.
Episodes
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The Guy Who Invented Pain (plus first reactions to PHP2Shell)
David Bianco built the Pyramid of Pain, so we offered him some more. David joins the crew for a conversation how AI changes about his famous model, how EvidenceForge creates simulated incidents for research and training, and why his red-team entrance exam didn’t go to plan. First, we discuss the...
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You've Got to Lurk Before you Smirk
How do you get under a cybercriminal’s skin? Sometimes you expose their operations. Sometimes you make every step through a network painfully slow. And sometimes, if you’re Azim, you join a dark web forum where they’re insulting you, and help them do it. Azim and Nick join Hazel and Dave this…
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Your AI Malware Experiments Are Showing
Adversaries are experimenting with AI-integrated malware, and today's guest, Talos researcher Ryan Fetterman has been looking at their working notes. He joins us to talk about CAIRN, his new open-source research toolkit for tracking that experimentation, and what he’s finding, including a C2 an...
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Martin Lee Would Like Everyone to Go Outside
Twenty-four hours before recording this episode, Martin Lee stopped being a Talos employee. Naturally, we made him come on the podcast anyway. Martin talks about abandoning his early career aspirations of researching human viruses and curing cancer, so he could play on the internet. He also talks...
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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...
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For the Record, No Comment
Kaitlin Acharya joins the Beers with Talos crew to take us inside the world of threat intelligence: what happens when Talos spots something that could become a major threat, how her team tracks changes in threat actor behavior, and how intelligence moves from an investigation into detection...
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"I Pay You $200 a Month!" - When Threat Actors Argue With AI
Cybercriminals are increasingly relying on AI, but in doing so, they're creating an entirely new source of threat intelligence. This week, Talos researcher Arnaud Zobec joins Hazel, Bill, Joe and Dave to discuss what happens when attackers leave behind AI prompt logs, agent configurations and…
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Keeping Up With the Cybercriminals
In this episode of Beers with Talos, Hazel, Bill, Dave and Joe are joined by Kendall McKay to dive into the soap opera of modern cybercrime. From rival gangs launching smear campaigns against one another to reputation systems, trusted intermediaries and dark web "customer reviews". Turns out…
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Space Pirates, Living Off Trusted Services, & Bill Declares Food War
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…
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AI Is Finding Bugs Faster. Now What?
AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery, so what impact is that having on defenders? In this episode of Beers with Talos, Hazel, Bill, Joe, and Dave are joined by Nick Biasini to unpack what attackers are doing with AI-assisted vulnerability discovery, why local models rather than frontier...
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25 Years of Uninterrupted Persistence
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...
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Gravy, Glutes, and the Talos Year in Review
Hazel, Bill, Joe and Dave break down (sometimes in the literal sense) the 2025 Talos Year in Review which is available now at blog.talosintelligence.com/2025yearinreview The team, supported as always by the Turkey Lurkey Man, dives into the biggest cybersecurity trends of the year, including: ·…
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It's the B+ Team: Matt Olney returns
It's the one, the only, it's Matt Olney! We are delighted to have Matt back to talk with the crew about about the most random things, including TikTok diagnosing us with ADHD, inspiring vtubers, K-Pop Demon Hunters, ransomware in hospitals (the serious bit), attacker use of AI, why 1999-era…
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Ranksgiving Returns: The Appetizer Uprising
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...
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Two Marshalls, One Podcast
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...
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How to Ruin an APT's Day, with Sara McBroom
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...
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So You Wanna Be an Incident Commander? Meet Alex Ryan
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...
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Terms and conceptions may apply
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...
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Year in Review 2024
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...
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The truth about Tasmanian devils, and getting into cybersecurity
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...
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Social Media Bans, Live Experiments, Cybersecurity Crosswords, and Nine Lives: The B team returns
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...
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Misadventures, Rabbit Holes, and Turkey Lurkey Goes to the Movies
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,...
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Black Hat 2024 preview
It's been a while huh? Apologies for our absence, but the team are back with a run through of everything we've got going on at Black Hat - from our 10 year birthday celebrations, the interesting lightning talks in our booth, and Joe Marshall's "Backdoors and Breaches" game. Come and visit us at...
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Stories from the Power Grid
Power grid security expert Joe Marshall joins the crew today to talk all things, well, power grid security. But not before he gets an impromptu pop quiz from Matt in the roundtable. Joe then tells some stories from his days working in electric utility, deploying new systems and his experiences…
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The old people episode
Matt, Mitch and Lurene discuss if the internet is better or worse today than it was 20 years ago. This leads them to discuss their various career paths, with Lurene talking about how she got into vulnerability exploitation and how Matt got into threat intelligence. And why neither of those paths...
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The Reverberations of Volt Typhoon
You will no doubt have seen the advisories published over the last few weeks concerning Volt Typhoon's malicious activities. In this episode, JJ Cummings joins the crew to discuss the background to this threat actor, their impact on the threat landscape, and the covertly strategic (and specific)...
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The Reddit Security Diaries
Matt, Mitch and Lurene sit down to discuss “random stuff from Reddit” (don’t be put off – they’re all genuinely interesting security questions!). Topics range from password managers and how password security guidance has become outdated, how to ‘self-learn’ in cybersecurity, and thoughtful...
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Talos Speed Dating (the episode we never set out to make but did anyway)
Mitch, Matt and Lurene were almost about to be in the same physical space at the same time to record an episode, and then Lurene couldn't make it...so we made this instead! Mitch is joined by Azim Khodjibaev from the Talos Threat Intelligence and Interdiction team to rapid-fire interview a bunch…
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The TurkeyLurkey Man wants YOU to read the Talos 2023 Year in Review report
We recorded this episode AFTER Thanksgiving, so you'll need to forgive us for the amount of Thanksgiving talk that doesn't actually apply until Thanksgiving 2024. It all evens out in the end because the annual "Ranksgiving" from special guest David Liebenberg results in the creation of…
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Chicken Soup and Contact Centers
It's that time of the quarter again when we sit down to look at what we learned over the past three months. Caitlin Huey from the Talos Threat Interdiction Team joins the show for this special look at the latest Talos Incident Response Quarterly Trends report. Caitlin's team helps compile these...
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Who is Jacques Wagon?
This episode of Beers with Talos has a very special guest: Our old friend Nigel Houghton. He's one of the OG BWTers and is back with two-plus years' worth of hot takes to get off his chest. Nigel starts out by delivering his long-awaited update on his beloved Mighty Red. But he, Mitch, Matt and...
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"I'm going to breach you off." "Not if I breach you off first!"
We know we're like two weeks late to the Barbie party, but the whole Beers with Talos crew has seen it now so we had to talk about it. Expect a lot of "Barbie" talk up at the top. After that, though, we dive into how to set up deception systems and establish your environment to make it harder for...
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Rachel Tobac on social engineering, expanding opportunities for women in cybersecurity
In this special episode, Matt is flying solo while he interviews Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security. Rachel's company helps individuals and companies keep their data safe by offering various training and penetration testing opportunities, all related to social engineering attacks and...
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Yarrr! There be mercenaries on the high seas!
The Beers with Talos Crew is back to a team of four this week, with special guest Nick Biasini joining the show to talk about Mercenary Groups and the spyware they're creating. This episode, we talk about the current spyware landscape, and how it encompasses "mercenary" groups like the NSO Group...
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Oh hello, "Susan"
Mitch was out for this recording, so Hazel Burton, the newest addition to Team Talos, stepped in to host this episode! She, Lurene and Matt got together for Mental Health Awareness Month and share stories and advice with one another. Cybersecurity is a notoriously rough field for burnout and an...
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The XDR Files
Our second of two episodes recorded live at the RSA Conference, Mitch and Lurene are joined by Nick Biasini from Talos Outreach and AJ Shipley, a vice president of product management for Cisco Secure. The four of them recap Nick and AJ's talk they gave at RSA and discuss the centralization of...
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SHIFT_NOP
This is the first of two episodes we have coming out that we recorded live at the RSA Conference. In this edition of Beers with Talos, we welcome Mick Baccio, a security strategist for Splunk, to talk about all things RSA. At this point in the week, we had hit the halfway point of RSA and were...
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The one where they talk a lot about wireless routers
This episode discusses network resilience, hardware hygiene, and the recently disclosed Jaguar Tooth campaign. J.J. joins the show and the usual cast to discuss the recent attacks against out-of-date and unpatched wireless routers from sophisticated, state-sponsored actors. J.J., Matt and Lurene...
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Should we even care about vulnerability severity scores?
Everyone fears the dreaded 10-out-of-10 CVSS severity score on a vulnerability with "critical" written somewhere on the advisory. But does that number even matter to an attacker or hypothetical defender? Matt, Mitch and Lurene discuss the various ways the security community classifies...
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Beers with Talos Ep. #130: Ransomware is a people problem (but getting rid of email helps)
(Recorded Jan. 27, 2023) No Matt this episode, so we have two guests in the rotating chair(s): Nick Biasini and David Liebenberg. Lurene, Mitch and our two esteemed companions talk about the human problem of ransomware. Lurene says getting rid of email altogether is the best option — but since…
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Talos Year in Review 2022 w/ Dave Liebenberg
With this episode, we set out to discuss the first annual Cisco Talos Year in Review report - a look back at the major threats, trends, and topics from 2022 and what we should take forward into 2023. Our guest Dave Liebenberg runs the team behind this report and joins us to discuss *why* his team...
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I find your vulnerabilities offensive (and exploitable).
We are (finally) talking about the recent OpenSSL vulnerability as we had to redo this EP. In our infinite podcasting wisdom, we took a stab at it roughly 2 hours before the embargo expired and coverage was released - which is obviously is a very silly idea in hindsight. After we cover the…
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Im a skiddie, and you can too!
Mitch was trying to preserve his voice, so Matt is driving the bus during this episode — hang on! In this edition, we're talking about script kiddies (unfortunately, not "kitties.") These are basically adversaries with an extreme base level of computer knowledge who use basic scripts to carry out...
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The intricacies of cyber conflict in Ukraine
At the onset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many experts and government officials expected there to be two fronts of the war — one on the ground in Ukraine and one in cyberspace. But all things considered, we haven't seen as much offensive cyber warfare come from either side of this conflict…
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A(nother) new host approaches!
We're excited to add to the growing Beers with Talos family with the addition of Lurene Grenier to the squad. Lurene joins her first episode and hits the ground running talking about her current role within Talos. She, Mitch and Matt talk about the major differences between exploit development…
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Beers with Talos Ep. #107: Sailing the high seas in search of privateer groups
You’re not going to believe this, but everyone actually agreed on something in this episode. And no, it’s not regarding the best flavor of beef jerky. In this episode, we discuss a new category of threat actors that we’re choosing to call privateers. The guys discuss why this classification is…
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Is More than Executive Action in Order?
Recorded May 11, 2020 – Craig wins MVP of the podcast for his attempts to avoid discussing… something. Anyway, we went a little long on this podcast, but stick with us as we wind through the recent Executive Order on cybersecurity, and then discuss another… interesting take on how we should then...
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Beers with Talos Ep. #122: LIVE and in living color from RSA
We recorded this special episode live and actually in person last week at the RSA Conference, and we have a special treat for the listeners. The ever-elusive Matt Watchinski, Talos’ fearless leader, joins the show. We mainly spend some time talking about Talos’ work defending Ukraine during the...
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Beers with Talos Ep. #120: How attackers are finding new ways to bypass MFA
Our rotation of special guests continues on with Nate Pors from Talos Incident Response. Nate has been following several different attacks in which attackers bypassed multi-factor authentication with “prompt bombing” and other techniques. The crew discusses what the security community can do to...
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Beers with Talos Ep. #118: Reacting to the current situation in Ukraine
This was admittedly a tough one to record. In the middle of us trying to respond to the situation in Ukraine, we felt it was important to let our listeners in a bit. Matt, JJ and Liz discuss the work they and their teams are doing in Ukraine to protect critical systems there and keep users…
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About this show
Listen to Talos security experts as they dive into emerging threats, forcing the bad guys to innovate, hacking refrigerators, and other security issues, all with beer.
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Cisco Talos
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