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Ophir Harpaz – Guardicore

Ophir Harpaz
Security Researcher
Guardicore

Why nominated: After spending several years working on email security products, Ophir Harpaz became interested in understanding how malware worked. She then began working as a cybercrime researcher specializing in financial malware and hunted banking trojans and analyzed their malicious payloads. More specifically, she dealt with JavaScript code injected to banking web applications which was designed to steal both credentials and money from innocent end users.

Profile: Over the course of the last 12 months Harpaz created and released a free, online workshop titled Reverse Engineering for Beginners which has since reached millions of people. Harpaz was also inspired by the BlackHoodie reverse engineering workshop for women that she attended a few years ago. That burst of inspiration led to her getting together with some colleagues to organize an event for women who wish to familiarize themselves with low-level and security topics. The event, titled Low Level and Security Celebration, was hosted by Microsoft R&D center in Israel and was extremely successful. Harpaz taught a half-day Reverse Engineering workshop, presenting x86 architecture, assembly language, practical reverse engineering and debugging tools and exercises.

The workshop was such a success Harpaz decided to make the workshop accessible to everyone so she converted the materials into an extensive, online tutorial.

What colleagues say: “Ophir Harpaz joined the team less than six months ago and already kicked the team into overdrive. Ophir is enthusiastic regardless of whether she’s chasing down attackers or figuring out how malware operates. She is curious about technology and attackers and shares her passion and knowledge with others so they can learn from her experiences.” Daniel Goldberg, security research expert at Guardicore Labs.

Doug Olenick

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