Book Image

Fuzzing Against the Machine

By : Antonio Nappa, Eduardo Blázquez
Book Image

Fuzzing Against the Machine

By: Antonio Nappa, Eduardo Blázquez

Overview of this book

Emulation and fuzzing are among the many techniques that can be used to improve cybersecurity; however, utilizing these efficiently can be tricky. Fuzzing Against the Machine is your hands-on guide to understanding how these powerful tools and techniques work. Using a variety of real-world use cases and practical examples, this book helps you grasp the fundamental concepts of fuzzing and emulation along with advanced vulnerability research, providing you with the tools and skills needed to find security flaws in your software. The book begins by introducing you to two open source fuzzer engines: QEMU, which allows you to run software for whatever architecture you can think of, and American fuzzy lop (AFL) and its improved version AFL++. You’ll learn to combine these powerful tools to create your own emulation and fuzzing environment and then use it to discover vulnerabilities in various systems, such as iOS, Android, and Samsung's Mobile Baseband software, Shannon. After reading the introductions and setting up your environment, you’ll be able to dive into whichever chapter you want, although the topics gradually become more advanced as the book progresses. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the skills, knowledge, and practice required to find flaws in any firmware by emulating and fuzzing it with QEMU and several fuzzing engines.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Foundations
5
Part 2: Emulation and Fuzzing
9
Part 3: Advanced Concepts
15
Chapter 12: Conclusion and Final Remarks

OpenWrt

OpenWrt is a Linux-based embedded firmware, mainly for WiFi routers. In addition to the power of Linux (for example, firewalls, packet forwarding, routing, and packet mangling), OpenWrt provides a full filesystem and a package manager for installing useful extras and customizing our router the way that suits our needs. The following screenshot shows the web interface for configuration:

Figure 8.1 – An example of the web interface

Figure 8.1 – An example of the web interface

As you can see, there are numerous options and configuration possibilities available with OpenWrt. Additionally, OpenWrt is now extending its development to modern routers that support speeds of up to 2.5 Gbps and even 10 Gbps. While the x86 platform may not appear to be a realistic IoT option at first glance, many network devices, including the official Zeek intrusion detection system from zeek.org, use this architecture. Furthermore, due to the popularity of the architecture, the firmware can run smoothly within...