Fuzzing is the process of finding security vulnerabilities in input-processing code by repeatedly testing the code with modified inputs. In this paper, we formalize fuzzing as a reinforcement learning problem using the concept of Markov decision processes. This in turn allows us to apply state-of-the-art deep Q-learning algorithms that optimize rewards, which we define from runtime properties of the program under test. By observing the rewards caused by mutating with a specific set of actions performed on an initial program input, the fuzzing agent learns a policy that can next generate new higher-reward inputs. We have implemented this new approach, and preliminary empirical evidence shows that reinforcement fuzzing can outperform baseline random fuzzing.
Combining statistical neural-network-based machine learning with fuzzing is a novel approach and, to the best of our knowledge, there is just one prior paper on this topic: @cite_20 use character-based language models to learn a generative model of fuzzing inputs, but they do not use reinforcement learning.
@cite_20
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Fuzzing consists of repeatedly testing an application with modified, or fuzzed, inputs with the goal of finding security vulnerabilities in input-parsing code. In this paper, we show how to automate the generation of an input grammar suitable for input fuzzing using sample inputs and neural-network-based statistical machine-learning techniques. We present a detailed case study with a complex input format, namely PDF, and a large complex security-critical parser for this format, namely, the PDF parser embedded in Microsoft's new Edge browser. We discuss (and measure) the tension between conflicting learning and fuzzing goals: learning wants to capture the structure of well-formed inputs, while fuzzing wants to break that structure in order to cover unexpected code paths and find bugs. We also present a new algorithm for this learn&fuzz challenge which uses a learnt input probability distribution to intelligently guide where to fuzz inputs. Machine learning models are notoriously difficult to interpret and debug. This is particularly true of neural networks. In this work, we introduce automated software testing techniques for neural networks that are well-suited to discovering errors which occur only for rare inputs. Specifically, we develop coverage-guided fuzzing (CGF) methods for neural networks. In CGF, random mutations of inputs to a neural network are guided by a coverage metric toward the goal of satisfying user-specified constraints. We describe how fast approximate nearest neighbor algorithms can provide this coverage metric. We then discuss the application of CGF to the following goals: finding numerical errors in trained neural networks, generating disagreements between neural networks and quantized versions of those networks, and surfacing undesirable behavior in character level language models. Finally, we release an open source library called TensorFuzz that implements the described techniques. Fuzzing is a popular dynamic program analysis technique used to find vulnerabilities in complex software. Fuzzing involves presenting a target program with crafted malicious input designed to cause crashes, buffer overflows, memory errors, and exceptions. Crafting malicious inputs in an efficient manner is a difficult open problem and often the best approach to generating such inputs is through applying uniform random mutations to pre-existing valid inputs (seed files). We present a learning technique that uses neural networks to learn patterns in the input files from past fuzzing explorations to guide future fuzzing explorations. In particular, the neural models learn a function to predict good (and bad) locations in input files to perform fuzzing mutations based on the past mutations and corresponding code coverage information. We implement several neural models including LSTMs and sequence-to-sequence models that can encode variable length input files. We incorporate our models in the state-of-the-art AFL (American Fuzzy Lop) fuzzer and show significant improvements in terms of code coverage, unique code paths, and crashes for various input formats including ELF, PNG, PDF, and XML. Random program generation — fuzzing — is an effective technique for discovering bugs in compilers but successful fuzzers require extensive development effort for every language supported by the compiler, and often leave parts of the language space untested. We introduce DeepSmith, a novel machine learning approach to accelerating compiler validation through the inference of generative models for compiler inputs. Our approach infers a learned model of the structure of real world code based on a large corpus of open source code. Then, it uses the model to automatically generate tens of thousands of realistic programs. Finally, we apply established differential testing methodologies on them to expose bugs in compilers. We apply our approach to the OpenCL programming language, automatically exposing bugs with little effort on our side. In 1,000 hours of automated testing of commercial and open source compilers, we discover bugs in all of them, submitting 67 bug reports. Our test cases are on average two orders of magnitude smaller than the state-of-the-art, require 3.03× less time to generate and evaluate, and expose bugs which the state-of-the-art cannot. Our random program generator, comprising only 500 lines of code, took 12 hours to train for OpenCL versus the state-of-the-art taking 9 man months to port from a generator for C and 50,000 lines of code. With 18 lines of code we extended our program generator to a second language, uncovering crashes in Solidity compilers in 12 hours of automated testing.