Trail of Bits Internship Opportunities: Launch Your Cybersecurity Career

Trail of Bits, founded in 2012 by three expert hackers without any initial investment, has become a leading cybersecurity firm. Specializing in novel research and practical solutions, it helps secure some of the world's most targeted organizations and devices. The company is dedicated to reducing security risks associated with emerging technologies and driving both industry advancements and public awareness of the technology that underpins the modern world.

Democratizing Security Information

Trail of Bits believes in democratizing security information through blogs, whitepapers, newsletters, meetups, and open-source tools. By enhancing community understanding of security, they underscore the unique value a company like theirs provides.

Overview of the Winternship Program

Trail of Bits offers a unique "Winternship" (Winter Internship) opportunity. This short-term remote program is designed to coincide with university winter breaks, providing students with the chance to work on exciting projects while still enjoying the holiday season. Starting in December and lasting for 3 to 6 weeks, the Winternship allows for impactful engagement. Winterns will be paid $2,500 following program completion.

How to Apply

There are two options for applying to the Winternship:

Option 1: Propose a Project

Projects should be short-term, achievable within the Winternship duration, and focused on cybersecurity. After the project concludes, all project materials must be open-source code under a permissive license (e.g., Apache2) hosted on GitHub. Applicants are encouraged to explore past internship programs for inspiration.

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Option 2: Work with One of Our Teams on a Project

Applicants can select which teams they are interested in working with on their application.

What You’ll Gain

Winterns collaborate with experts, gain valuable insights, and make an impact using the latest technology. The program offers flexibility, allowing participants to exercise creativity and problem-solving skills on a project.

Requirements

Currently or recently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program.
Available for at least three weeks between December 8, 2025, and January 30, 2026.
Legally eligible to work in the United States either currently or upon graduation.

Preferred Qualifications

These qualifications are not required, and applicants are encouraged to apply even if they don’t meet all of them:

Participation in CTFs (Capture The Flag competitions)
Experience with reverse engineering
Built AI applications
Used AI in cybersecurity settings

Perks & Benefits

Trail of Bits prioritizes employee engagement and retention, offering industry-leading development opportunities, client experience, benefits, and perks to help employees do their best work.

Premium Insurance & Wellness Benefits

Health Insurance with no monthly premiums
Vision, Dental, Life & Disability Insurance
Access to Kindbody for gynecology and fertility care
Access to HealthAdvocate, Teledoc & OneMedical

Top Tier Compensation

401k with 5% company matching
Competitive salaries
Ongoing bonus opportunities

Additional Ancillary Benefits

ConnectYourCare Flex Spending Account (FSA)
Commuter Benefits
Fitness stipends

Generous Time Off

Four weeks of PTO (Paid Time Off)
Fifteen company holidays
4 months paid parental leave

Multiple Bonus Opportunities

End-of-year performance
Continuing education, public presentations, and blog posts
Recruiting & referrals

Exciting Company Events

Conferences & off-sites
Company & team outings
Virtual events

Continuing Professional Development

Continuing education
Training sessions & learning courses
Internal research & development Projects

Caring Perks

Charitable donation matching
Relocation assistance
1Password subscription
Work from home stipend
Remote work friendly

Candidate FAQ

When can I expect to hear back once I submit my application?

Applications are typically reviewed within 5-7 business days. If the applicant meets the requirements, a member of the talent acquisition team will reach out to schedule a preliminary phone screen.

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What is the interview process for this role?

The interview process for full-time roles typically consists of several stages:

Preliminary screen with our Senior Technical Recruiter (30 minutes)
Technical screening with an engineer or hiring manager (60 minutes)
Technical assessment or take-home project (if applicable, varies by role).

The technical assessment allows Trail of Bits to evaluate both technical expertise and the ability to communicate findings effectively.

Do you offer remote work options?

Yes, Trail of Bits offers remote work arrangements, and the company has team members across multiple time zones. They require sufficient overlap with colleagues for collaboration. The specific details of remote work options are discussed during the interview process and vary by team and project requirements.

What kind of engineering projects would I work on?

Trail of Bits teams work on a diverse range of projects, including:

Development of novel security analysis tools and research
Security assessments of complex software systems and applications
Analysis of cryptographic protocols and zero-knowledge proof systems
Security evaluations of AI/ML models and systems
Smart contract audits and blockchain protocol security reviews
Binary analysis and reverse engineering projects
Contributions to open-source security tools
Publication of security research findings

The specific projects depend on the role, expertise, and team placement.

Read also: Flexible Tuition at Old Trail

Examples of Past Intern Projects and Contributions

Trail of Bits interns have made significant contributions to various projects. Here are a few examples:

AI-Powered Tools: A business operations intern built two AI-powered tools that became permanent company resources, including a podcast workflow that saves 1,250 hours annually and a Slack exporter that enables efficient knowledge retrieval across the organization.
Echidna Performance Optimization: An intern optimized the performance of Echidna, Trail of Bits’ open-source smart contract fuzzer, written in Haskell, by pinpointing and debugging a massive space leak.
OpenSSL Libcrypto API Bug Detection: An intern created five CodeQL queries that catch potentially potent bugs in the OpenSSL libcrypto API, a widely adopted API that can be misused to cause memory leaks, authentication bypasses, and other cryptographic issues.
GNU Project Debugger (GDB) Improvements: A winter associate made improvements to the GNU Project Debugger (GDB) to make it run faster and improve its Python API.
eBPF Verifier Testability: An intern prototyped a harness that improves the testability of the eBPF verifier, simplifying the testing of eBPF programs.
Vulnerability Discovery in wolfSSL: Trail of Bits disclosed four vulnerabilities affecting wolfSSL (CVE-2022-38152, CVE-2022-38153, CVE-2022-39173, and CVE-2022-42905) that were discovered automatically using the novel protocol fuzzer tlspuffin.
Syntex Tool Prototyping: An intern prototyped an internal tool called Syntex that does searching on Clang ASTs to avoid the limitations of regular expressions and custom parsers.
Manticore Enhancements: Interns have worked on enhancing Manticore, a symbolic execution engine, and its user interface (MUI) to improve smart contract and native binary analysis.
PrivacyRaven Improvements: Interns worked on improving PrivacyRaven, a Python-based tool for testing deep-learning frameworks against privacy attacks, by adding compatibility for services.
Solar Framework Development: An intern worked on Solar, a proof-of-concept static analysis framework for Solidity smart contracts.
Honeybee Fuzzer Development: A winter intern focused on working through challenges to make Honeybee, an experimental coverage-guided fuzzer that records program control flow using Intel Processor Trace (IPT) technology.
Magnifier Tool Development: During an internship, Magnifier, an experimental reverse engineering user interface, was developed to reshape a decompiled program.
Go-fuzz Improvements: During a winternship, improvements were made to go-fuzz, a coverage-based fuzzer for projects written in Go, to enhance the effectiveness of Go fuzzing campaigns and provide a better experience for users.

Real-World Impact and Vulnerability Disclosures

Trail of Bits' work has led to the discovery and disclosure of significant vulnerabilities in widely used software. For example, they discovered and disclosed two vulnerabilities in the elliptic JavaScript library that could allow signature forgery or prevent valid signature verification. They also disclosed CVE-2022-35737, which affects applications that use the SQLite library API.

Tools and Platforms Developed

Trail of Bits has developed several tools and platforms to enhance security analysis, including:

Checksec Anywhere: A browser-based platform that consolidates fragmented binary security analysis tools.
Manticore: A symbolic execution engine for analyzing smart contracts and native binaries.
Slither: A static analysis tool for Solidity smart contracts.
Honeybee: An experimental coverage-guided fuzzer.
Magnifier: An experimental reverse engineering user interface.

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