James M. Wolfe Lockheed Martin Corporation
For some time there has been a discussion in the AV community as to who can be considered a virus researcher. Is it the code monkey that spends countless hours ripping through pages of source code to find out what a virus is supposed to do? Is it the person in the AV company R&D lab that develops the updates to AV products to fight the viruses? Or is it perhaps the person who looks at trends in virus writing and profiles virus writers to help predict what will happen next? How about the person sitting in a large corporation who perhaps does all of the above in an effort to protect their company? (Nah, everybody knows that corporate types don't know what they want or need, right?) I propose a talk for VB 2002 discussing four different virus research individuals to help decide which can rightfully be called `Virus Researcher'. The four types I will discuss are:
