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

A brief history of iOS emulation

Many efforts to emulate iOS have been tried over the years. Currently, the only successful commercial product that does so is made by Corellium Inc., but its internals are completely unknown and the product is closed source. Additionally, the owners are facing legal challenges from Apple. In the open source community, some incomplete attempts have been made, such as those by @zhuowei in 2018 and Aleph Research in 2019. Unfortunately, development on these attempts stopped after a BlackHat demo, and the last commit is from September 2021.

Although researchers look for a reliable open source alternative, the situation seems almost hopeless. The only way to sustain such projects is to have enough free time to devote with no guarantee on the result or success. Jing Tian and Antonio Bianchi were recently awarded an NFS grant to support the development of an emulator that is reliable and constantly maintained. The National Science Foundation sponsors this...