FormatFuzzer: Effective Fuzzing of Binary File Formats

09/23/2021
by   Rafael Dutra, et al.
0

Effective fuzzing of programs that process structured binary inputs, such as multimedia files, is a challenging task, since those programs expect a very specific input format. Existing fuzzers, however, are mostly format-agnostic, which makes them versatile, but also ineffective when a specific format is required. We present FormatFuzzer, a generator for format-specific fuzzers. FormatFuzzer takes as input a binary template (a format specification used by the 010 Editor) and compiles it into C++ code that acts as parser, mutator, and highly efficient generator of inputs conforming to the rules of the language. The resulting format-specific fuzzer can be used as a standalone producer or mutator in black-box settings, where no guidance from the program is available. In addition, by providing mutable decision seeds, it can be easily integrated with arbitrary format-agnostic fuzzers such as AFL to make them format-aware. In our evaluation on complex formats such as MP4 or ZIP, FormatFuzzer showed to be a highly effective producer of valid inputs that also detected previously unknown memory errors in ffmpeg and timidity.

READ FULL TEXT

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset