I think (i could be wrong though), that a lot of reverse engineering jobs in the commercial sector are advertised as "Software engineers" or "software security", rarely do they use the title "Reverse Engineer", focus on the job description that contains relevant keywords.
As for A community for RE, unfortunately I only know of /r/ReverseEngineering and a discord channel, they both smack of elitism (those who know something will make you jump through hoops rather than suggest a reading material, some other place to look for your answer, or antagonize you in different ways), that has been my experience with them so far.
I found this video to be very interesting and inspiring for people like me who'd love to do projects to improve their reverse engineering skills (even the content is not strictly about reverse engineering).
> Also, you haven't really defined what "makes sense" means for you. Does that mean being able to refactor it, maintain or just evaluate it?
I meant to be able to understand the components that make up the software, so to be able to maintain it and contribute to code base.
This was the require textbook when i took a PSY101 class, I found that it covered many aspects in psychology in friendly and easy manner, along with examples and explanations:
"Psychology And Life"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0205843379/
> Leave the reverse engineering of malware etc. to people with more interest and time.
...
> (remember, your average consumer believes in using an anti-virus to clean out a infected machine, when the correct thing to do is a complete wipe and reinstallation). Easier get them to offload most of their productivity tools to SaaSes and buy plenty of insurance than try to force FANG-level access control protocols on them.
putting aside CMU (a lot of people wouldn't be able to get into it), what would you recommend for someone getting a Software Engineering degree to get into low level security ?
Interesting, I've always thought getting an advanced degree was about doing research and taking classes of topics that interests you (for breadth of knowledge), whenever I open the topics with my friends (both of home have a decade in industry as software engineers) about getting a masters in CS, all I get is "its a waste of time", "on the job experience is more valuable". Even though I keep seeing jobs that require masters in cs more often.
Because its the most used and therefore the most targeted. It doesn't have to be considered %100 secure just because its linux, remember the early 2000s with windows 2000 and XP and how they were also heavily targeted. things have changed now of course.
same thing could happen to Mac OS X if it becomes more widely used (happened already).
I mentioned this earlier, but you could try "Brave" (https://brave.com/) a web browser based on chrome. same features just less of the google-stickiness.
as a software engineering student I often feel discouraged because I'm studying Software Engineering (and not Computer Science), I reached a conclusion that I don't want to get into research but rather learn how to create and maintain software (system programming and security for example are two topics I like read about and get into).