Mutation based testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities in software

Mutation based fuzzing is one type of fuzzing in which the fuzzer has some knowledge about the input format of the program under test. This entry was posted in volume 01, issue 05 july 2012. Mutation testing is a fault based software testing technique that has been widely studied for over three decades. All that is needed to do is to execute a process to notify armory to make pbod tests for a specific process. Mutationbased testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities.

In mutation testing faults are deliberately seeded into the original program, by simple syntactic changes, to create a set of faulty programs called mutants, each containing a different syntactic change. The approach is based on the combination of lightweight static analysis techniques and mutationbased evolutionary strategies. A recent analysis by rescorla 18 agrees with this observation, as it shows that vulnerabilities continue to be discovered at a constant rate in many types of software. Evaluating quality of security testing of the jdk acm digital library. Memory on the heap is dynamically allocated by the application at runtime and typically contains program data. Several recent studies 7, 8 suggest that mutation based testing can reveal real faults introduced by experienced programmers during software implementation. Dataflow analysis is a widely used method to detect defects in source code, however, its rigorous application towards coverage of potential buffer overflow vulnerability sites is not quite reported for. To allow users of winamp the ability to keep track of the mp3 music files they are using, winamp uses an id3 tag in which the user can enter title, artist, album and other information. A buffer overflow or overrun is a memory safety issue where a program does not properly check the boundaries of an allocated fixedlength memory buffer and writes more data than it. A buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is a common software coding mistake that an attacker could exploit to gain access to your system.

Mutation testing or mutation analysis or program mutation is used to design new software tests and evaluate the quality of existing software tests. Mutation testing involves modifying a program in small ways. So by the end of the lesson, youll be able to tell me what defines a buffer overflow and describe how shellcode is used in buffer overflow attacks. To effectively mitigate buffer overflow vulnerabilities, it is important to understand what buffer overflows are, what dangers they pose to your applications, and what techniques attackers use to successfully exploit these vulnerabilities.

Fuzzing software testing technique hackersonlineclub. Most software developers know what a buffer overflow vulnerability is, but buffer overflow attacks against both legacy and newlydeveloped applications are still quite common. The program is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes, failing builtin code assertions, or potential memory leaks. The following are the testing strategies which are applied to the software application. Offsetaware mutation based fuzzing for buffer over. Bringing up the possibility of the input not being nulterminated is. This often happens due to bad programming and the lack of or poor input validation on the application side.

What is the best way to manually test for buffer overflows. The exploit utilized by codered was a first generation buffer overflow that is more complex and is described below. Causes of stack based overflow vulnerabilities stack based buffer overflows are caused by programs that do not verify the length of data being copied into a buffer. Each mutated version is called a mutant and tests detect and reject mutants by causing the behavior of the original version to differ from the mutant. Buffer overflow attacks have been launched against websites by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in operating systems and language runtimes.

Fuzz testing helps to identify vulnerabilities which are prone to be exploited by buffer overflow, dos denial of service, sql injection and crosssite scripting. This course we will explore the foundations of software security. The vulnerability is due to improper memory operations performed by the affected software while parsing crafted word files. Its mainly using for finding software coding errors and loopholes in networks and operating system. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a packet that submits malicious input to the targeted system. This host has sun java web server running which is prone to multiple heap based buffer overflow vulnerabilities. The heartbleed attack took advantage of a serious vulnerability in the openssl cryptographic software library that linux based webservers use to encrypt ssltls traffic. Fuzzing or fuzz testing is an automated software testing technique that involves providing invalid, unexpected, or random data as inputs to a computer program. Download citation mutation based testing of integer overflow vulnerabilities integer overflow vulnerability is a kind of common software vulnerabilities, there has been no effective way to. An approach of vulnerability testing for thirdparty.

The industrys most comprehensive software security platform that unifies with devops and provides static and interactive application security testing, software composition analysis and application security training and skills development to reduce and remediate risk from software vulnerabilities. The bug was originally fixed throughout version 2, but has since. Mutation based testing has been employed to assess the quality of test data sets 9, 10, 11. First, a static taintanalysis allows to identify the most dangerous execution paths, containing vulnerable statements those execution. Buffer overflow is one of the most common types of software vulnerabilities.

Please suggest some technique that can help me detect vulnerabilities either at compile time or runtime. Buffer overflow bof is one of the major vulnerabilities that lead to nonsecure software. An analysis and survey of the development of mutation testing. This paper presents a novel method for bof test for ansi c language, which uses program instrumentation and mutation test technology to test the bof vulnerabilities. However, if too much data is entered into these id3 tags, the program has buffer overflow vulnerability. Dynamic tools to detect vulnerabilities in software. Mutation based testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities abstract.

First, a static taintanalysis allows to identify the most dangerous execution paths, containing vulnerable statements those. But by using fuzz technique, it ensures that the application is robust and secure, as this technique helps to expose most of the common vulnerabilities. Techniques to exploit buffer overflow vulnerabilities vary based on the operating system and programming language, but the goal is always to manipulate a computers memory to subvert or control. This paper presents a novel method for bof test for ansi c language, which uses program instrumentation and mutation test technology to test the bof vulnerabilities, on the basis of. Testing an implementation for bof vulnerabilities is challenging as the underlying reasons of buffer. In computer software and applications compsac, pages 979. It works by creating peachpit files, which are the xml files containing the complete information about the data structure, type information and the relationship of the data. In software engineering, fuzz testing shows the presence of bugs in an application.

Testing an implementation for bof vulnerabilities is challengi mutationbased testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities ieee conference publication. Cause effect path based coverage criteria for testing. Well, buffer overflows or buffer under runs, is really in rewriting over data. Mutation based testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities h shahriar, m zulkernine 2008 32nd annual ieee international computer software and applications, 2008. We reports on the vulnerability detection tools in section 5. Mutationbased testing can be employed to obtain adequate test data sets, and numerous mutation operators have been proposed to date to measure the adequacy of test data sets that reveal functional faults. And every answer has that problem, which is unavoidable given the signature of func. Denial of service, and so forth, using unexpected, malformed, random data called fuzz as program inputs. We will consider important software vulnerabilities and attacks that exploit them such as buffer overflows, sql injection, and session hijacking and we will consider defenses that prevent or mitigate these attacks, including advanced testing and program analysis techniques. Buffer overflow bof is one of the major vulnerabilities that leads to nonsecure software. It is wellknown that the safe behaviour of critical cyberphysical systems may be severely jeopardized by the intentional activation of system vulnerabilities, typically.

Security metrics, mutation testing, vulnerability assessment. Buffer overflow occurs when an application writes more data to a block of memory, or buffer, than the buffer is allocated to hold. The literature on mutation testing has contributed a set of approaches, tools, developments, and empirical results. Mutation analysis is the most common form of software fault based testing. Mutation testing is an effective fault based testing technique that aims to identify whether a codebase is vulnerable to specific classes of faults. In this thesis, we apply the idea of mutation based adequate testing to perform vulnerability testing of buffer overflows, sql injections, and format string bugs. Note that the above code is not free from problems either. This article presents few preliminary results and future ideas related to smart fuzzing to detect buffer overflow vulnerabilities.

The program is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes, failing built in code assertions, or potential memory leaks. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis and survey of mutation testing. Testing an implementation for bof vulnerabilities is. Sun java system web server multiple heapbased buffer. Fuzz testing is a software testing technique used to discover faults and. The second way to test for buffer overflows is to look at compiled code. Research on buffer overflow test based on invariant. It occurs when a program tries to add more data in the buffer than its storage capacity allows. Fuzz testing or fuzzing is a technique used by ethical hackers to discover security loopholes in software, operating systems or networks by massive inputting of random data to the system in an. Enhancing software security measurement with mutation. The program is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes, or failing builtin code assertions or. Impact successful exploitation lets the attackers to cause the application to crash or execute arbitrary code on the system by sending an overly long request in an authorization. Because armory is an automatic security testing tool for buffer overflow defect detection, a programmer or testing engineer does not need to perform any special operation or learn any uncommon skills to use it. Part of the problem is due to the wide variety of ways buffer overflows can occur, and part is due to the errorprone techniques often used to prevent them.

Security penetration testing the art of hacking series livelessons. The paper also presents the results of several development trend analyses. The buffer overflow vulnerability is a wellknown sort of security vulnerability. Peach fuzzer is a smart fuzzer with both the generation and mutation capabilities. Mutation based testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities 7 can be effective but expensive. Testing an implementation for bof vulnerabilities is challenging as the underlying reasons of buffer overflow vary widely. Pdf buffer overflow bof is one of the major vulnerabilities that leads to non secure software. It was developed as a software testing approach and has since been adapted to. A vulnerability in microsoft office word could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. Moreover, the existing vulnerability testing approaches do. A fault model is used to produce hypothetical faulty programs by creating variants of the program under test. To start with, the precondition mutation algorithm pcma is presented to generate mutants set of the precondition and test. The application of fuzz testing to security protocols and virtual machines is based on a.

Mutationbased testing of buffer overflow vulnerabilities h shahriar, m zulkernine 2008 32nd annual ieee international computer software and applications, 2008. With automatic tool support, static buffer overflow detection technique has been widely used in academia and industry. An adequate test data set consists of test cases that can expose faults in a software implementation. Jan 04, 2012 fuzzing or fuzz testing is basically nothing more than a software testing technique used to uncover a variety of issues, among them. Mutation testing is a faultbased testing methodology that. Introduction in this paper we discuss several approaches of model based testing to security testing and argue that this methodology is very beneficial for this purpose in order to ensure quality constraints. Jan 02, 2017 buffer overflow vulnerabilities occur in all kinds of software from operating systems to clientserver applications and desktop software. The vendor has confirmed the vulnerability and released software updates. With the format string attack, you have to carefully tailor your attack to be able to redirect the execution flow without causing a crash, so they are way more complex to design. A successful exploit could trigger a heap based buffer overflow condition that the attacker could use to execute arbitrary code or cause a dos condition. Mutationbased testing of integer overflow vulnerabilities.

Michael lynn presented a technique to take control of an ios based router, which is achieved by means of a buffer overflow or a heap overflow, two types of memory vulnerabilities 2. Variants are created by seeding faults, that is, by making a small change to the program under test following a pattern in the fault model. Fuzzing is a software testing technique, often automated or semiautomated, that involves providing invalid, unexpected, or random data to the inputs of a computer program. Offsetaware mutation based fuzzing for buffer overflow. Gyan chawdhary and varun uppal proposed a method to debug cisco ios and write shellcodes with gnu debugger, which makes it easier to attack routers 4.

Mutation based fuzzers are used to alter existing data samples in order to create new test data. While random fuzzing can find already severe vulnerabilities, modern fuzzers do have a detailed understanding of the input format that is expected by the program under test. A buffer overflow occurring in the heap data area is referred to as a heap overflow and is exploitable in a manner different from that of stack based overflows. Evaluation of software vulnerability detection methods and. Mutationbased fuzzing is one type of fuzzing in which the fuzzer has some. Mutation testing of memoryrelated operators ucl discovery. Testing an implementation for bof vulnerabilities is challengi.

To appear in the proceedings of the second international workshop on security in software engineering iwsse 2008, pp. Both testing techniques are based on guiding conditions statically derived by integer. The approach is based on the combination of lightweight static analysis techniques and mutation based evolutionary strategies. Is there any new way that can be used in finding out the buffer overflow vulnerability. We believe that bringing the idea of traditional functional test adequacy to vulnerability testing can help address the issue of test adequacy. There have been attempts to explore the potential of mutation testing in detecting vulnerabilities in a program and 10 is one of them, wherein mutation testing is apllied to reveal buffer overflow and sql injection vulnerabilities in software. Fuzzing cannot guarantee detection of bugs completely in an application. The research on component vulnerability testing is critical. Busybox dhcp client heapbased buffer overflow vulnerability.

An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by convincing a targeted user to open a malicious word document. Various static analysis and dynamic testing techniques have been proposed to detect buffer overflow vulnerabilities. In this work, we apply the idea of mutation based testing technique to. Debian has released a security advisory and updated packages to address the buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the x11 truetype font server.