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

Part 2: Emulation and Fuzzing

This part of the book starts digging deeper into a practical view of emulation and fuzzing. You will start installing QEMU and learning how to apply emulation. In the same way, you will learn about different types of analysis techniques used when analyzing binaries, together with practical examples. After learning about binary analysis, the book will cover the installation of AFL/AFL++ and its usage with a real exploitation case. The book will introduce part of TriforceAFL internals, which will be useful in the next part of the book. Finally, you will learn about basic instrumentation with QEMU, and how to add new hardware to QEMU.

This part consists of the following chapters:

  • Chapter 4, QEMU Execution Modes and Fuzzing
  • Chapter 5, A Famous Refrain – AFL+QEMU = CVEs
  • Chapter 6, Modifying QEMU for Basic Instrumentation