Sr Threat Researcher Security Research

palo_alto_networks; Great Falls Crossing (VA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking security firm as a Senior Threat Researcher, where your expertise will help protect digital life by identifying vulnerabilities and developing innovative countermeasures. In this role, you will collaborate with top security professionals to automate threat detection and enhance the capabilities of cutting-edge security products. Your work will involve analyzing exploit code, developing detection signatures, and presenting your findings at industry events. This is an exciting opportunity to make a significant impact in the cybersecurity landscape while working in a dynamic and supportive environment that values creativity and collaboration.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of security operations and network fundamentals.
• Experience with malware analysis and threat intelligence tools.

Responsibilities

• Develop durable detection signatures for the Palo Alto product set.
• Analyze exploit code and assess vulnerabilities and attacker tools.
• Present research findings at conferences and customer meetings.

Skills

Automation and Scripting

Threat Intelligence Analysis

Security Operations

Malware Analysis

Network Analysis

Open Source Intelligence

Vulnerability Assessment

Countermeasures Development

Education

BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent experience

Tools

Maltego

Snort

Yara

Wireshark

IDA Pro

Job description

PALO ALTO NETWORKS is the fastest-growing security company in history. We offer the chance to be part of an important mission: ending breaches and protecting our way of digital life. If you are a motivated, intelligent, creative, and hardworking individual, then this job is for you!

The core mission of this team is to improve detection and response for our enterprise customers through applied threat intelligence. This is accomplished by combining internal and external threat data to assess and remediate gaps in the coverage and capabilities of the Palo Alto enterprise security platform.

Palo Alto Networks, and the security research team believe in raising the cost of operations for the adversary by creating durable and contextually rich countermeasures. As a member of this team you will be expected to consistently strive to Automate, Innovate, and Collaborate with some of the best security minds on the planet.

The Senior Threat Researcher will focus on the identification of actively exploited vulnerabilities and post-exploitation methodologies present in hack tools, attack frameworks, targeted attack campaigns, and public POC availability. This requires a cross disciplined approach involving open source intelligence analysis, crawler and honey client deployment, and leveraging the attack telemetry returned by the Palo Alto Networks enterprise security platform.

A strong focus on automation and scripting is desired, with expected manual analysis of newly discovered threats. Core to this role is the creation of durable detection signatures (both heuristic and byte level) as well as categorization of discovered threats.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Produce and test durable heuristic and byte level prevention and alerting signatures for the Palo Alto product set (IPS, Wildfire, Traps, AutoFocus, LightCyber).
• Leverage internal and external data sources to actively hunt for new exploit detections and correlated threat campaigns and web based exploit kits.
• Collect open source information for aggregation into our intelligence repository.
• Analyze exploit code, vulnerabilities, and attacker tools to assess their functionality, origin and purpose.
• Develop tools to assist with automation of collection and processing of threat data.
• Perform coverage and capability gap analysis of the Palo Alto Product set, ensuring true positive fully contextual detections.
• Present new research at conferences and at customer meetings as desired.
• Respond to Requests for Information (RFIs) from our consumer organizations within Palo Alto Networks.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, and experience working on remote teams.
• Strong understanding of computer science fundamentals, specifically networking, databases and tool development.
• Strong understanding of security operations: perimeter defense, forensics, incident response, kill chain analysis, risk assessment and security metrics.
• Understanding of malware construction, usage and detection techniques.
• Understanding of vulnerability discovery and severity assessment methodologies.
• Experience developing profiles of actors and groups based on data.
• Experience developing and deploying effective countermeasures (Yara, Snort, SIEM Correlation Rules, etc.)
• Prior use of intelligence tools such as Maltego, Analyst’s Notebook and Palantir.
• Prior use of malware analysis tools such as IDA Pro, Hex-Rays Decompiler, OllyDbg, Immunity Debugger and Yara.
• Prior use of network analysis tools such as Wireshark, TCPDump and Scapy.
• Candidates must be open to travel requirements (up to 10%).
• BS/MS or equivalent experience required.

Learn more about Palo Alto Networks HERE and check out our FAST FACTS.