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
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44:31
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 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 HatWe 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/
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51:57
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 and headlines)The dawning of Mind-games-as-a-service in ransomware operationsConference dogs that may have been the real security MVPsA possible underground war against dairyAnd 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.
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31:28
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 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
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43:37
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 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 TalosDiversity in cybersecurity: A mosaic of career opportunitiesHow to hire the best (an earlier episode of BWT that Bill references)
Threats, Beers, and No Silver Bullets. Listen to Talos security experts as they bring their hot takes on current security topics and Talos research to the table. Along the way, Mitch, Matt and a rotating chair of special guests will talk about anything (and we mean anything) that's on their minds, from the latest YouTube trends to Olympic curling etiquette. New episodes every other Thursday.
South Africa