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authorvan Hauser <vh@thc.org>2020-08-14 07:09:01 +0200
committervan Hauser <vh@thc.org>2020-08-14 07:09:01 +0200
commite94cc1fae0e78cd6c2e7e3cad737ad039148888f (patch)
treee6d5bcc402a7efbd585ab8c464999ad36c387128 /docs
parent32fe047894cc241eb9c1b53e4b2b791ca9b145d1 (diff)
downloadAFLplusplus-e94cc1fae0e78cd6c2e7e3cad737ad039148888f.tar.gz
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## Contents
1. [How to improve the fuzzing speed?](#how-to-improve-the-fuzzing-speed)
- 2. [What is an edge?](#what-is-an-edge)
- 3. [Why is my stability below 100%?](#why-is-my-stability-below-100)
- 4. [How can I improve the stability value](#how-can-i-improve-the-stability-value)
+ 2. [How do I fuzz a network service?](#how-to-fuzz-a-network-service)
+ 3. [How do I fuzz a GUI program?](#how-to-fuzz-a-gui-program)
+ 4. [What is an edge?](#what-is-an-edge)
+ 5. [Why is my stability below 100%?](#why-is-my-stability-below-100)
+ 6. [How can I improve the stability value](#how-can-i-improve-the-stability-value)
If you find an interesting or important question missing, submit it via
[https://github.com/AFLplusplus/AFLplusplus/issues](https://github.com/AFLplusplus/AFLplusplus/issues)
@@ -20,6 +22,43 @@ If you find an interesting or important question missing, submit it via
6. Running on an `ext2` filesystem with `noatime` mount option will be a bit faster than on any other journaling filesystem
7. Use your cores! [README.md:3.b) Using multiple cores/threads](../README.md#b-using-multiple-coresthreads)
+## How do I fuzz a network service?
+
+The short answer is - you cannot, at least "out of the box".
+
+Using network has a slow-down of x10-20 on the fuzzing speed, does not scale,
+and finally usually it is more than one initial data packet but a back-and-forth
+which is totally unsupported by most coverage aware fuzzers.
+
+The established method to fuzz network services is to modify the source code
+to read from a file or stdin (fd 0) (or even faster via shared memory, combine
+this with persistent mode [llvm_mode/README.persistent_mode.md](llvm_mode/README.persistent_mode.md)
+and you have a performance gain of x10 instead of a performance loss of over
+x10 - that is a x100 difference!
+
+If modifying the source is not an option (e.g. because you only have a binary
+and perform binary fuzzing) you can also use a shared library with AFL_PRELOAD
+to emulate the network. This is also much faster than network would be.
+See [examples/socket_fuzzing/](../examples/socket_fuzzing/)
+
+There is an outdated afl++ branch that implements networking if you are
+desperate though: [https://github.com/AFLplusplus/AFLplusplus/tree/networking](https://github.com/AFLplusplus/AFLplusplus/tree/networking) -
+however a better option is AFLnet ([https://github.com/aflnet/aflnet](https://github.com/aflnet/aflnet))
+which allows you to define network state with different type of data packets.
+
+## How do I fuzz a GUI program?
+
+If the GUI program can read the fuzz data from a file (via the command line,
+a fixed location or via an environment variable) without needing any user
+interaction then then yes.
+
+Otherwise it is not possible without modifying the source code - which is a
+very good idea anyway as the GUI functionality is a huge CPU/time overhead
+for the fuzzing.
+
+So create a new `main()` that just reads the test case and calls the
+functionality for processing the input that the GUI program is using.
+
## What is an "edge"
A program contains `functions`, `functions` contain the compiled machine code.