Also Because “Bounty Hunter” is a Rad Job Title
The last two days have involved driving to work rather than taking the train, hence a lack of writing. I did put up a post over on bluesoul.me that might give a little clue as to what I’ve been up to.
I’ve been involved with fighting ransomware before, if only from the position of raising awareness. At the same time, I’ve been really unsure as to what I want to pursue as my next “deep” hobby. This week, it clicked. I’m going to be a malware researcher.
There are a number of things about this decision that really appeal to me. I have that innate desire to help people, and this is an opportunity to leverage skills that not a lot of people have to do so, potentially to save people from losing what might amount to their life story in digital form. From about the age of 13 on, I’ve had a fascination with hacking, and I can actually take the gloves off as a white-hat, working with teams to dissect viruses and help neutralize the source. There’s a fair amount of press (I’ll stop short of calling it fame) that can come with being a security expert. I’m not planning on leaving my job any time soon, mind you, I just like being renowned for something. It gives me an opportunity to learn an entirely separate field of computing than I’ve ever been exposed to. I’ve got about a 900-page book called Practical Malware Analysis that is pretty much all new content for me. That’s exciting for me. I also have the ability to do something that’s rare in the malware analysis scene right now, which is to quickly translate the research findings into something usable for sysadmins. I did this yesterday and it went over very well.… (More) “Also Because “Bounty Hunter” is a Rad Job Title”