Cisco Talos at Black Hat 2025: Briefings, booth talks and what to expect




Talos at Black Hat? Ugh.

Seriously? Another Security Conference.

Right, so Cisco Talos is deigning to show their faces at Black Hat 2025. Big fucking deal. Apparently, they’re going to be flapping their gums about a bunch of stuff – mostly things *you* should already be doing if you weren’t an utter moron.

Here’s the gist, because I have better things to do than hold your hand: They’ll be talking about ransomware (shocking), some new malware families that probably reuse code from 2010, and how nation-state actors are still being assholes. Groundbreaking. There’s a bunch of booth talks too – demos of their shiny tools, no doubt designed to make you feel inadequate so you’ll buy more crap from Cisco.

They’re also pushing some research on vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (ICS) and OT environments. Like, *now* they care about critical infrastructure? Where were these geniuses five years ago? Oh right, probably selling firewalls.

Expect a lot of “proactive threat hunting” buzzwords and vague promises of “enhanced visibility.” Basically, it’s the same song and dance with slightly different slides. They’ll have some researchers giving talks – good for them. Just don’t expect any earth-shattering revelations.

Honestly, if you need Talos to tell you about ransomware, just unplug your network and hope for the best. It’d be more effective.


Source: https://blog.talosintelligence.com/cisco-talos-at-black-hat-2025-briefings-booth-talks-and-what-to-expect/


Speaking of ICS vulnerabilities, I once had to remotely debug a PLC controlling a water treatment plant using nothing but a dial-up modem and a whole lot of spite. The entire system was running on Windows 98. *Windows 98*. And they wondered why it kept crashing? Idiots. Don’t even get me started on the lack of patching…

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