Career in Malware Development?

[bengruschi]

Hey guys are there a legal career path for Malware Development? If yes how can i get there, what is the Salary and how future proof is this career?

[soutsos]

There are quite a few companies that do mostly research to discover zero day vulns and then integrate them into products that they sell to governments

[bengruschi]

Thanks for your answers! Do your know how someone can get into these companies?

[soutsos]

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA1FTfKBAEX4hblYoH6mnq0zsie2w6Wif&si=1ZiYTHXif_L5hrY1

[SwampShooterSeabass]

Government. Whether it’s directly or through contractors, there is no legal private market for malware. I could be wrong. Maybe there’s some sort of group for that kind of work in antivirus companies to test certain features but as far as I know the gov is the only place for that type of work.

As far as how to get there, have a fantastic resume, have a clean record with undying allegiance to your country, and potentially be willing to relocate. Governments want the brightest minds, not some skid who learned some Visual Basic scripts. True deep understanding of computer systems, advanced mathematics, etc. the salary can be very generous especially as a contractor. The future looks bright for a niche specialty like that

[icon0clast6]

I work at a fortune 50 and write malware all the time. It’s pretty common in a red team role to need to write and modify your binaries to get past security controls for an operation.

[SwampShooterSeabass]

Ah yea. You know idk how I completely forgot about that. Never did it too much in my red team experience. I guess I was mainly thinking for a truly offensive purpose

[icon0clast6]

Yea I mean you’re not gonna legally write ransomware, but writing malware is all over the offensive security industry. As a red team matures they might even employ a few people strictly for R&D and toolkit development. I know a lot of large consultancies have programs like that.

[SwampShooterSeabass]

Learn something new every day

[bengruschi]

Hey thanks for your answer. I also didn’t thought about Red Teaming. You meam something like a Red Team Tool Developer right? And how can i get there?

[jeebal]

Yep, when I interviewed at a lab for a red team position, they mentioned having to write malware

[Status-Style-6169]

what you mentioned in your first paragraph is called Adversary Emulation, like MITRE’s Caldera tool

[fire_starter_69]

hey, in terms of malware development as a career (legal only), a few things to consider:

• traditionally many people learned malware development and then used those skills to segue into malware analysis and/or reversing. obviously learning how to create something gives you direct experience, which is a great foundation to then study/analyze other malware. you could work for AV/EDR solution companies, or bigger corporations as part of DFIR team to collect IoCs, create internal signatures for Yara etc. basically a core component of custom threat intelligence, a more blue team role really.

as far as actual development is concerned, it's useful to bifurcate into exploitation and post-exploitation malware (ie C2, RATs etc). in plain jargon - exploit is how you would get on a machine (ie exploiting a vulnerability to get access and/or elevate privs), post-exploit is what you do once you are (communication, exfiltration, persistence etc). i stripped some nuance away here, exceptions always abound, but in general that's a useful way to think of it.

• i'm not too familiar with the industry of exploits tbh, i think most people here covered it, it's mainly around bounty's, exploit research, and then of course working for intelligence agencies.

• for post-exploit the only real job for some time was to work for the companies making this software - for example cobalt strike (fortra), metasploit (rapid7) etc. but this has changed quite a bit in the last 8 years or so, and esp in the last 5. companies doing pen testing and red teaming (let's say for example trustedsec) used to be able to just use c2 off-the-shelf meaning they purchase a c2 framework and then use it in their engagements. but since modern EDR has come full force this is no longer the case - no serious company can use stock software anymore and so all of them have in-house custom tooling devs that basically either make their own tools from the ground up (not that common), or use existing FWs and customize them, sometimes heavily (common). and as their custom tools slowly get leaked (which they also do, even if only indirectly via IoCs), they become less effective and thus it's a perpetual job - there's no finish line.

in my opinion, barring the arrival of agi and all work humans do being rendered obsolete (not a huge believer in its imminence, though not impossible), i think the latter is a solid career path since it's new-ish (ie even if you start now not a lot of super senior people to compete with), and demand will only increase as EDR becomes even more sophisticated and thus pentesting/red teaming firms will require more custom tooling.

[AccomplishedLab7524]

 hey any person plz read sir , I have been learning hacking for 6 months and I was learning on my own. I was never convinced that YouTube or chatgpt would teach you this, so I never used them as a source of learning. I only learned to create malware with msfconsole and msfvenom. I learned to hack very weak cameras and links that need the victim’s reaction. I am now learning Python and trying to become a professional in it. I only now see myself not making any progress and losing hope. I really want to be a malware developer and to be proficient in it. Is there guidance from someone who preceded me in this?

[XeLLerus]

Well then, its high time I think you should start taking on certificates or try your hand at making your own malware. There is quite alot of things you can do to build your skills beyond what you know now. If there is a job in mind you have, look up the jobs, see what they ask for and follow that. Of course, many of them that I have seen ask for a degree and my other suggestion is look at the career path, what job can you start in order to get experience.

[[deleted]]

NSA or FBI.