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IMMUNITYSEC

Malware Analyst

Malware analysts examine malicious software to determine its functionality, execution behavior, persistence mechanisms, and attacker intent. Their technical assessments inform incident containment, remediation, and recovery. They also identify indicators of compromise and track emerging malware families, tools, and techniques to improve detection and response.

Updated

Career track
Forensics and Incident Response
Certifications
1 listed
Certification topic
Digital Forensics and Incident Response

What They Do

11 tasks
  • Perform static and dynamic analysis of malware, including binaries and scripts, to determine its functionality, behavior, and intent.
  • Reverse engineer malicious executables, installers, and payloads to identify execution flow, persistence mechanisms, and embedded capabilities.
  • Run malware on isolated test systems, such as sandboxes and instrumented virtual machines, to observe its execution and system interactions.
  • Examine command-and-control communications, including protocols, encryption methods, obfuscation, and evasion techniques.
  • Identify, validate, and document indicators of compromise found through reverse engineering and behavioral analysis.
  • Correlate malware artifacts with endpoint telemetry, network traffic, and log data to determine the scope of a compromise.
  • Collect and analyze intrusion artifacts such as source code, malware, and system configuration, and use the findings to mitigate potential incidents.
  • Support forensic examinations of compromised systems to confirm malware presence, persistence, and post-exploitation behavior.
  • Advise incident responders on attacker capabilities, risks, and containment and mitigation strategies.
  • Write detailed technical reports and short summaries that turn malware findings into actionable intelligence.
  • Monitor emerging malware families, tools, and techniques to improve detection and response readiness.

Knowledge and Skills

  • Malware analysis principles, practices, tools, and techniques
  • Reverse engineering principles and software reverse engineering tools
  • Malware analysis tools such as IDA Pro
  • Binary analysis and binary analysis tools such as hexedit, xxd, and hexdump
  • Debugging tools and interpreting debugger results to determine tactics, techniques, and procedures
  • Obfuscation techniques and analyzing anomalous code as malicious or benign
  • Memory dump and volatile data analysis
  • Virtual machine detection, since some malware changes its behavior in a virtualized environment
  • Operating system structures and internals

How to Become a Malware Analyst

A federal judiciary job posting for an IT specialist (security) who works as a malware analyst in a security operations center required at least one full year of specialized experience. That experience covered advanced static and dynamic malware analysis, reverse engineering of malicious code, scripts, memory artifacts, and suspicious binaries, and analysis of log data to detect and investigate malicious activity. The position required no education to qualify.

The same posting listed four certifications as highly desired: Offensive Security Exploit Developer (OSED), Offensive Security Exploit Expert (OSEE), GIAC Reverse Engineering Malware (GREM), and GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester (GXPN). GIAC describes GREM as validating a practitioner's ability to examine the inner workings of malware in the context of forensic investigations, incident response, and Windows system administration.

Malware analysis also appears in forensics work. The NICE Framework Digital Forensics work role includes the task of performing tier 1, 2, and 3 malware analysis, and CISA lists skill in analyzing malware and in deep analysis of captured malicious code for its Cyber Defense Forensics Analyst work role.

Certifications

1 certifications
Digital Forensics and Incident Response certifications→

These are certifications that the sources on this page name for the role, as described in the FAQ.

Certification
GREM
GIAC Reverse Engineering Malware · GIAC

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a malware analyst do?→

A malware analyst examines malicious software with static and dynamic analysis and reverse engineering to determine what it does, how it persists, and what the attacker intends. The findings guide incident containment, remediation, and recovery. The analyst also documents indicators of compromise and writes technical reports.

How do I become a malware analyst?→

A federal judiciary malware analyst posting required at least one full year of specialized experience in static and dynamic malware analysis, reverse engineering of malicious code, and log analysis, and required no education to qualify. Malware analysis is also a task of the NICE Framework Digital Forensics work role, and CISA lists skill in analyzing malware for its Cyber Defense Forensics Analyst work role.

What skills does a malware analyst need?→

CISA lists knowledge of reverse engineering concepts and binary analysis, skill in identifying obfuscation techniques, interpreting debugger results, analyzing memory dumps, and analyzing malware. The NICE Framework adds knowledge of malware analysis tools and techniques, operating system structures and internals, and virtual machine detection.

What tools do malware analysts use?→

CISA names IDA Pro as an example of a malware analysis tool and hexedit, xxd, and hexdump as binary analysis tools. Malware analysts also use sandboxes and instrumented runtime environments to observe malware as it runs.

How do malware analysts study malware safely?→

NIST SP 800-83 describes two approaches: active analysis, which runs the malware, and forensic analysis, which examines an infected host. Active analysis is best done on isolated test systems instead of production hosts, often virtualized images that the analyst replaces with a known good image afterward. Some malware detects a virtualized environment and changes its behavior.

What certifications do malware analysts have?→

A federal judiciary malware analyst posting listed OSED, OSEE, GIAC Reverse Engineering Malware (GREM), and GXPN as highly desired certifications. GIAC describes GREM as validating the ability to examine the inner workings of malware for forensic investigations and incident response.

Role descriptions follow the sources listed above: U.S. government workforce data first, then standards bodies and, where named in the text, certification issuers. This site is not affiliated with CISA, the Department of Labor, or the Department of Defense.