Women in Information Security: Veronica Schmitt

Last time, I got to speak with Leila Powell. She went from astrophysics to an exciting career as a security data scientist.

This time, I have the pleasure of speaking with Veronica Schmitt of DFIRLABS, otherwise known as @M4lw4r3z_G1rl. She enjoys reverse engineering code, and she considers herself to be a cyborg!

Kim Crawley: Please tell me about what you do and what led to your cybersecurity career.

Veronica: I have been in the infosec community since the age of 18, straight out of school. I have always loved anything technology-related. I started working as a data capturer in our the Special Investigating Unit in South Africa where I ended up doing work helping with networks. This led to me falling in love with digital forensics and incident response. At 19, I got my pacemaker implanted, and I became enthralled with how these devices are protected.

I am one of two directors in our private practice called DFIRLABS. I have now moved more over to the field of malware analysis and incident response. I am also busy with my Masters Thesis on the similarities between ransomware families, which is very interesting. More so my passion at the moment is reverse engineering malware and doing research on the protection of medical implantable devices in terms of protection from hacking and malware.

KC: What are some of the challenges that are specific to reverse engineering?

V: The main challenges for me was when I started out and learned how to learn to read assembly code, but I was blessed with an amazing support system, both male and female. My biggest inspiration is Malware Unicorn, but currently, my biggest challenge is that the code has become complex and I have had instances where the decompiler itself has failed. It also can take (Read more...)