What is a malware analyst?
Malware analysts analyze different types of malware to understand the threat. This can include identifying the capabilities of the malware, how the malware functions, and identifying indicators of compromise (IOCs) that can be used to identify the malware. Other job titles you may see include malware reverse engineer. A solid background in programming, networking, system administration, and operating systems is helpful for malware analyst roles. Malware analysts also need to stay current on the latest threats. It is extremely helpful to have some knowledge of assembly as you progress in your malware analyst career.
There are typically two types of malware analysts:
- Escalation malware analysts work with incident response (IR) teams and analyze malware samples to determine the functionality of the malware, what it might have done on the system, and artifacts (for example, URLs, filenames, and hashes) that will help the IR team look for the infection...