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CISA Launches Thorium, A Free Automated Malware Analysis Platform
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), together with Sandia National Laboratories, introduced Thorium as a free, powerful malware analysis tool to boost cybersecurity.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- Thorium can analyze over 10 million files per hour with scalable automation.
- Thorium helps teams detect threats faster by integrating multiple malware tools.
- The platform is free and designed for use across federal and private sectors.
Announced on Thursday, Thorium is a scalable, automated platform designed to help cyber defenders quickly examine malware threats and run forensic analyses. It combines commercial, open-source, and custom tools into a single, easy-to-use system that speeds up threat detection and response.
“We’re constantly developing new tools, or acquiring new tools to do this kind of thing, and one of the problems we face is organizing and applying these tools in an effective fashion,” said Mike Compton, deputy section chief of code & media analysis at CISA, as reported by The Record .
“Sandia has helped us identify that and took a crack at helping us develop a solution to make that job easier,” he added.
Thorium automates routine tasks like file gathering, code analysis, and result indexing, which reduces their workload. The system integrates seamlessly into current cybersecurity operations, requiring only basic setup, and has the ability to process millions of files each hour via scalable cloud infrastructure.
“Thorium is not a silver bullet. It’s not going to solve all your problems […] but it is a step forward in establishing a platform that the entire community can use and we can all contribute to,” Compton added, as reported by The Record.
Michael Carson, a cybersecurity engineer at Sandia who led the project, said to The Record that the tool reduces both the time and cost of malware analysis. He adds that this is particularly helpful for organizations that lack in-house cyber defense teams.
According to CISA Associate Director Jermaine Roebuck, the goal was to “empower the broader cybersecurity community to orchestrate the use of advanced tools for malware and forensic analysis.”
The free Thorium platform enables teams to automate essential cyber defense operations while improving their collaborative capabilities between organizations.
Image by Carl Campbell, from Unsplash
Sales, Admin, And Tech Jobs Most At Risk from AI, Microsoft Says
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
Microsoft Research conducted a new study which warns how Copilot, alongside other generative AI tools, will impact jobs in fields such as sales roles, software development work, and office administration positions.
In a rush? Here are the quick facts:
- Most affected: sales, software, admin, education, legal, media roles.
- AI excels in gathering, writing, and teaching tasks across sectors.
- Manual labor jobs remain least impacted by generative AI tools.
The study , based on 200,000 real-world user-AI conversations, found that the most common tasks AI assists with include gathering information, writing, and teaching, which are all activities central to many white-collar jobs.
The research demonstrates that AI most strongly affects the employment sectors of Sales, Computer and Mathematical, Office and Administrative Support, Education, Legal, and Media and Communication.
These are jobs where much of the work revolves around processing, creating, or communicating information, something AI does increasingly well.
“Information gathering and writing activities receive the most positive thumbs feedback and are the most successfully completed tasks,” the study noted. It added that AI often acts as a “coach, advisor, or teacher that gathers information and explains it to the user.”
While AI hasn’t yet fully automated any single job, the overlap between AI’s abilities and job tasks is growing. “There are definitely some occupations for which many—perhaps even most—work activities have some overlap with demonstrated AI capabilities,” the researchers found.
Still, the authors caution against assuming these jobs will immediately disappear. “It is tempting to conclude that occupations that have high overlap with activities AI performs will be automated […] This would be a mistake,” they write, citing past examples like ATMs, which shifted job roles rather than eliminating them entirely.
The study indicates that knowledge-based and communication-heavy roles will experience the most immediate disruption, while manual labor and physical jobs remain relatively unaffected.
The ability of AI to perform tasks determines which jobs will be at risk, thus requiring workers, educators, and policymakers to understand this relationship.
