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

To get the most out of this book

In order not to miss any detail in the text, you should already have some knowledge in the following areas:

  • General knowledge of operating systems and, ideally, the specifics of POSIX-compliant systems
  • The C and Python programming languages
  • Some basic knowledge of embedded devices and/or electronics

This book assumes that you have the following tools installed on your system (see the following table):

Software/hardware covered in the book

Other requirements/instructions

QEMU

[Refer to Chapter 1]

AFL/AFL++

[Refer to Chapter 1]

Ghidra

[Refer to Chapter 1]

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[Refer to Chapter 1]

The The utility belt section found in Chapter 1 provides a brief background on each of the aforementioned tools, together with installation instructions. Additionally, a working installation of some common tools such as Git and Python 3 is assumed present.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.