arrow
Return

MSNFuzz: Multi-criteria state-sensitive network protocols fuzzing

delete2025-08-09
delete0
PRE
AI
Y
Yuqi Zhai
R
Rui Ma *
Z
Zheng Zhang
赵
赵思琪 (Siqi Zhao)
Y
Yuche Yang
DOI:10.1016/j.cose.2025.104621delete
deleteOriginal
deleteOriginal request for help
deleteShare
deleteSave
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Existing protocol fuzzing techniques suffer a lot from lacking state guidance on seed evaluation during seed selection and energy allocation. That reduces fuzzing efficiency and effectiveness. We thus conduct a research focusing on seed evaluation in grey-box protocol fuzzing and propose a multi-criteria state-sensitive network protocol fuzzing method named MSNFuzz. To improve seed evaluation, we firstly re-think and re-evaluate seed potential in protocol fuzzing and improve the evaluation by introducing fine-grained state-sensitive criteria. Based on the multi-criteria evaluation, a probability-based greedy algorithm is adopted to prioritize selecting promising seeds to better explore the state space of the protocol. Moreover, we also assign different mutation energies for seeds based on the occurrence frequency of its corresponding state to be selected. That allows for flexible adjustment of mutation energy. We further evaluate the performance of MSNFuzz by comparing with AFLNET, AFLNWE, StateAFL and NSFuzz, on 13 typical protocol programs from ProFuzzBench. The experimental results show that MSNFuzz discovers 17.7%, 57.7% and 30.0% more paths, 52.4%, 123.6% and 71.0% more crashes than AFLNET, AFLNWE, and StateAFL on average, and discovers 0.18% more paths and 1.8% less crashes than NSFuzz, which is the state-of-the-art but relatively heavy solution. Besides, MSNFuzz discovers 22.1% more states and 16.5% state transitions than AFLNET on average. That highlights MSNFuzz could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of fuzzing.
Keywords:
protocol fuzzing
seed evaluation
state-sensitive
multi-criteria
mutation energy

Journal

C
Computers and Security
IF:
5.4
Papers:
4.6K
Citations:
1.4W

Organization

P
platform financial development center
Scholars:
1
Papers: 1
Citations: 0
B
beijing institute of technology
Scholars:
5.5W
Papers: 4.0W
Citations: 63
Cited Papers

Cited Papers

SLIME: program-sensitive energy allocation for fuzzing
err2022-07-18
err0
PREAI
errChenyang Lyu; Hong Liang; Shouling Ji; Xuhong Zhang; Binbin Zhao; Meng Han; Yun Li; Zhe Wang; Wenhai Wang; Raheem Beyah
errShare
errSave
Coverage-Based Greybox Fuzzing as Markov Chain
err2019-05-01
err473
PREAI
errBohme, Marcel; Van-Thuan Pham; Roychoudhury, Abhik
errShare
errSave
Smart seed selection-based effective black box fuzzing for IIoT protocol
err2020-03-14
err0
PREAI
errSungJin Kim; Jaeik Cho; Changhoon Lee; Taeshik Shon
errShare
errSave
NSFuzz: Towards Efficient and State-Aware Network Service Fuzzing
err2023-09-28
err14
errOAAI
errQin, Shisong; Hu, Fan; Ma, Zheyu; Zhao, Bodong; Yin, Tingting; Zhang, Chao
errShare
errSave
SGPFuzzer: A State-Driven Smart Graybox Protocol Fuzzer for Network Protocol Implementations
err2020-01-01
err17
errOAAI
errYu, Yingchao; Chen, Zuoning; Gan, Shuitao; Wang, Xiaofeng
errShare
errSave
Large Language Model guided Protocol Fuzzing
err2024-01-01
err0
errOAAI
errRuijie Meng; Martin Mirchev; Marcel Böhme; Abhik Roychoudhury
errShare
errSave
researcher View more