Yes. The lessons, diagrams, inline exercises, defensive playbooks, and capstone guidance are available without a paywall or signup requirement.

Free course

Malware Analysis and Defense for Developers

Q: Does this course teach learners to create malware?

No. It explains malware behavior from a defender's perspective and uses only inert fixtures, synthetic telemetry, sanitized evidence, and tightly constrained benign demonstrations. It does not include live malware, weaponized payloads, persistence, credential theft, propagation, destructive behavior, command and control, or evasion techniques.

Q: Is the course suitable for software developers?

Yes. The course starts with an optional beginner bridge and connects every analysis result to developer decisions such as dependency controls, signed updates, plugin isolation, least privilege, telemetry, rollback, and incident readiness.

Q: Do I need reverse-engineering experience?

No prior reverse engineering is required. The assembly and Ghidra modules begin with harmless source-built utilities and teach how to separate code capability from observed execution.

Q: Can I perform the labs on my daily-use computer?

Inert and synthetic evidence can be reviewed locally, but any benign executable demonstration requires a disposable virtual machine with the exact isolation controls shown in the lab. Docker alone is not treated as the containment boundary.

Q: Which standards and tools does the course use?

The course uses MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND for behavior and countermeasure mapping, NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 for incident response, NIST SSDF and SLSA for secure development, Ghidra for benign program comprehension, YARA for inert file rules, and Sigma for synthetic log analytics.

Analyze evidence safely, engineer useful detections, contain incidents, and build software that is harder to compromise.

Beginner bridge to intermediate17 modules17 inline exercises120 hours

Start Module 1 View curriculum

Version-pinned references

MITRE ATT&CK 19.2 · reviewed 2026-08-25
MITRE D3FEND 1.5.0 · reviewed 2026-08-25
NIST SP 800-61 Revision 3 · reviewed 2026-08-25
SLSA 1.2 · reviewed 2026-08-25
Sigma Rule Specification 2.1.0 · reviewed 2026-08-25
STIX 2.1 · reviewed 2026-08-25
FIRST TLP 2.0 · reviewed 2026-08-25

Outcomes

What you will be able to do and explain

Each outcome is tied to architecture, operational judgement, or a concrete deployment habit you can reuse at work.

Outcome 1

Preserve and triage suspicious evidence without contaminating the original

Outcome 2

Explain PE, ELF, managed-code, script, package, endpoint, network, and memory evidence

Outcome 3

Map observed behavior to version-pinned ATT&CK and defensive D3FEND concepts without overclaiming

Outcome 4

Write and test YARA and Sigma detections with benign negative corpora

Outcome 5

Support containment, recovery, reporting, and lessons learned using NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3

Outcome 6

Improve dependencies, updates, provenance, permissions, telemetry, and rollback in production software

Learning loop

Learn the model, practice the decision, keep the checklist

This course teaches developers how to reason about malicious software without distributing or executing live malware. Learners work with instructor-authored benign programs, inert fixtures, synthetic telemetry, sanitized network records, and evidence-based incident scenarios. The outcome is practical defensive skill: preserving evidence, explaining behavior, testing detections, supporting recovery, and improving software architecture.

Inspect the architecture

Start every module with the system model: components, trust boundaries, data flow, and the production problem it solves.

Practice the failure mode

Labs and exercises focus on the operational edge cases that separate tutorial knowledge from production confidence.

Ship with judgement

Production notes, common mistakes, and tradeoffs make the course useful when you are designing or reviewing real systems.

Good fit

Who should take this course?

This course is written for engineers who need practical production context, not abstract theory.

Software developers who want to understand malware evidence and build safer applications

Platform, DevOps, SRE, and cloud engineers responsible for prevention and incident readiness

Security engineers moving from alerts into evidence-based analysis and detection engineering

Technical leads and architects reviewing update, plugin, dependency, and recovery designs

Curriculum

Full course path

17 modules, 17 inline exercises, 120 hours of production-focused learning.

Authorization, Ethics, and Lab ContainmentCreate a defensible safety boundary before opening, inspecting, or executing any security artifact. 4 hours | 1 exercises

Malware Concepts and Multi-Axis TaxonomyDescribe observed behavior precisely instead of forcing every incident into one malware label. 6 hours | 1 exercises

Evidence Acquisition, Provenance, and Chain of CustodyPreserve trustworthy evidence and document every transformation before drawing a conclusion. 6 hours | 1 exercises

Static Triage Across PE, ELF, Scripts, and PackagesExtract defensible facts from files and package metadata without executing the artifact. 10 hours | 1 exercises

Assembly and Compiler LiteracyRead compiler output as evidence and recover a harmless program's control flow without guessing from syntax alone. 8 hours | 1 exercises

Ghidra and Decompiler WorkflowUse Ghidra to answer a bounded defensive question about a transparent, source-built utility. 10 hours | 1 exercises

Managed Code, Packages, Containers, and WASMTriage modern software artifacts and supply-chain evidence without installing or running untrusted content. 6 hours | 1 exercises

Controlled Endpoint Behavioral AnalysisTurn process, file, configuration, and security telemetry into defensible findings with a tightly bounded benign demo. 8 hours | 1 exercises

Offline Network EvidenceReconstruct DNS, flow, HTTP, and TLS stories from sanitized network records without contacting a real destination. 6 hours | 1 exercises

Sanitized Memory and Volatile EvidenceReason across processes, modules, handles, sockets, and integrity evidence without exposing secrets or analyzing a real compromised host. 6 hours | 1 exercises

MITRE ATT&CK v19.2 and D3FEND MappingTranslate observed behavior into a versioned threat model, defensive countermeasures, and measurable coverage. 6 hours | 1 exercises

YARA Detection as CodeTurn defensible observations into reviewed, tested rules without handling live malware. 8 hours | 1 exercises

Sigma and Telemetry AnalyticsWrite portable behavioral detections and tune them against synthetic production noise. 8 hours | 1 exercises

Containment, Eradication, and RecoveryCoordinate a safe incident response using NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 and evidence-based decisions. 6 hours | 1 exercises

Reporting and Safe Intelligence SharingCommunicate evidence, uncertainty, and toy observables with STIX 2.1 and TLP 2.0. 4 hours | 1 exercises

Building Malware-Resistant SoftwareApply SSDF, SLSA 1.2, signing, provenance, SBOMs, least privilege, and safe rollback. 4 hours | 1 exercises

Capstone: The Northstar Developer Tool IncidentInvestigate a fully synthetic release-integrity incident and deliver detections, response, and prevention. 14 hours | 1 exercises

Focused guides

Start with the topic you need

Use a focused guide to understand the production problem, then continue into the relevant module and the full course path.

Instructor

Vishal Anand

Senior Software Engineer and Security-Focused System Architect

Vishal builds production software and explains security, distributed systems, identity, and architecture through practical engineering decisions.

GitHub profile About CodersSecret Consulting

Assessment

How defensive work is evaluated

Evaluation rewards evidence quality, reproducibility, false-positive discipline, recovery decisions, and safety. It does not reward offensive capability or speed.

FAQ

Questions before you start

Does this course teach learners to create malware?

Is the course suitable for software developers?

Do I need reverse-engineering experience?

Can I perform the labs on my daily-use computer?

Which standards and tools does the course use?

Is the course free?

Topics

Course reference tags

Malware analysisDetection engineeringYARASigmaIncident responseSecure developmentSupply chain security