Vicente Diaz from VirusTotal: Exploring the World of Threat Hunting

Vicente Diaz is a specialist in Threat Intelligence and Threat Hunting. He works in the VirusTotal team in Google as Threat Intelligence Strategist and holds a degree in Computer Science and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence. On the latest The Pivot episode, Vicente shares his threat hunting journey and what threat intelligence means to him. By introducing us to his work in VirusTotal and his role within the company, Vicente shares some of his most interesting and relevant investigations, the toolkits he uses the most, and how anyone can get started with threat hunting. Vicente also gives some tips and tricks into how anyone, people and corporates, can protect themselves from the current crises surrounding privacy and threat intelligence. 0:00 Welcome! 0:47 Tell us a bit about yourself! 3:17 Where and how did you start getting into threat intelligence investigations? 6:11 What does threat intellignece mean to you and what are you working on right now?  11:15 What is VirusTortal and what is your role within the company? 14:24 Can you share an interesting investigation done with VirusTotal? 20:03 Are there any interesting, yet dark, threat actor groups involved while conducting an investigation? 27:37 Have you been targeted in your activities? 31:05 How often do these investigations create targeting problems? 34:55 What are the toolkits that you use frequently? 38:10 Do you have any passion projects outside the threat intelligence sphere? 41:31 How to get strarted in threat hunting? 46:07 Tell us the top 3 tools/methods people can use to protect themselves! 50:55 Any other interesting stories you would like to share? ■ About The Pivot Brought to you by Maltego, The Pivot deep dives into topics pivoting from information security to the criminal underground. Each episode features interviews with experts from the industry and research fields and explores how they connect the dots. ■ About Maltego Used by investigators worldwide, Maltego is a graphical link analysis tool that allows users to mine, merge, and map data from OSINT and third-party data integrations for all sorts of investigations—cybersecurity, person of interest, fraud, and more. The podcast streams free on Spotify. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe to our Twitter and LinkedIn to stay on top of our latest updates, tutorials, webinars, and deep dives. For more information about Maltego, visit our website.