Beers with Talos Podcast

Епизоде

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  Martin Lee Would Like Everyone to Go Outside 17.09.2026 1ч 11мин

  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 about how running very long distances in crazy conditions helps him to stop himself thinking about it. He has some words of wisdom for aspiring practitioners, and why the rest of us should occa...
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  Eight People Walk Into a Dark Web Forum. They’re All Azim 02.09.2026 1ч 13мин

  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 keep his cover intact, and what can provoke threat actors into revealing information. His work has occasionally made Azim part of the story. Ransomware operators have threatened him, and on...
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  For the Record, No Comment 19.08.2026 1ч 4мин

  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 content. She also faces some tougher questions involving tennis, Derry Girls and an evil genie. We also attempt to extract some information about Kaitlin’s former life at a certain intelligence agency. Res...
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  "I Pay You $200 a Month!" - When Threat Actors Argue With AI 05.08.2026 1ч 2мин

  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 other unexpected artifacts. From jailbreak attempts to agentic workflows and accidental infrastructure leaks, the team discusses what these artifacts reveal about attacker behavior, and where/how AI is c...
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  Keeping Up With the Cybercriminals 22.07.2026 53мин

  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, every ransomware operation is one passive-aggressive group chat message away from falling apart. Kendall chats to us about how AI is changing the economics of cybercrime, why it's helping inexperienced a...
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  Space Pirates, Living Off Trusted Services, & Bill Declares Food War 08.07.2026 54мин

  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 ...
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  AI Is Finding Bugs Faster. Now What? 24.06.2026 47мин

  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 models may be a more attractive route for them, and the vendors who are now drowning in a flood of bug reports (many of them junk) as AI sifts through decades of technical debt with nothing but time and ...
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  25 Years of Uninterrupted Persistence 30.04.2026 46мин

  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 Coll...
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  Gravy, Glutes, and the Talos Year in Review 23.03.2026 55мин

  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: · The rapid weaponization of vulnerabilities · Why identity abuse showed up everywhere · Ransomware trends ·&nbsp...
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  It's the B+ Team: Matt Olney returns 10.03.2026 57мин

  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 tricks are still undefeated, and an entirely reasonable number of desserts. We recorded this episode on 20 February - please see the Talos blog for the latest on the developing situation in the Middle East...
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  Ranksgiving Returns: The Appetizer Uprising 04.12.2025 46мин

  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 cyberatt...
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  Two Marshalls, One Podcast 16.10.2025 45мин

  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 t...
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  How to Ruin an APT's Day, with Sara McBroom 11.09.2025 44мин

  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 a...
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  So You Wanna Be an Incident Commander? Meet Alex Ryan 31.07.2025 51мин

  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 d...
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  Terms and conceptions may apply 27.06.2025 31мин

  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 quiet...
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  Year in Review 2024 31.03.2025 43мин

  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.talosintell...
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  The truth about Tasmanian devils, and getting into cybersecurity 27.02.2025 43мин

  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 ...
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  Social Media Bans, Live Experiments, Cybersecurity Crosswords, and Nine Lives: The B team returns 16.01.2025 37мин

  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 organizati...
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  Misadventures, Rabbit Holes, and Turkey Lurkey Goes to the Movies 05.12.2024 47мин

  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...
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  Black Hat 2024 preview 01.08.2024 38мин

  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 Cisco Booth 1732 and Splunk Booth 1940. Before that, Matt encourages Mitch and Lurene to join him in the joy of Tekkno Train by Electric Callboy (Choo Choo!) and Mitch explains why his son has develop...