DevOps 2023: Make your Applications more secure using the Fuzzy Testing technique

Understanding Fuzzing in 2023 to make your Applications more secure

What is Fuzzy Testing?

Barton Miller first discovered Fuzz testing in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin.

Fuzzy testing or Fuzzing is a software testing method that works on invalid or random data from different sources. The invalid data (or FUZZ) are then fed into a software system that checks for coding errors and security loopholes present in the software or connected networks.

This type of security testing allows you to monitor the system for anomalies using automated or semi-automated techniques. This testing will enable you to describe the system testing process using a distributed approach. It is a predictive approach to find bugs within an application or software.

There are two security testing types- Static application security testing (SAST) and Dynamic application security testing (DAST). The SAST approach works on static applications and checks for known errors that may result in security vulnerabilities, while the DAST approach works on running applications to check for bugs. You can consider Fuzzy testing as DAST as fuzzy testing involves running applications to monitor how it responds to different input types and generates various errors.

Why to do Fuzzy Testing?

It is always a safe approach to assume that our application, software, or network are prone to errors or any vulnerabilities which need to be discovered, monitored, and removed. Thus make Fuzzy testing an essential part of the development and testing phase. 

There are many reasons as why we should adopt Fuzzy testing into our environment.

• It allows you to detect security loopholes within the system.
• Based on assumptions, this testing is applied at the early stage of development that saves much of the time and cost to detect serious security threats.
• Fuzzy testing allows you to reach a convincing conclusion when combined with Black Box testing, Beta testing, etc.
• Hackers commonly use this technique.
• It can also be considered similar to negative automated testing.
• It helps you to find the vulnerability of the system.

Why Fuzzing?

Fuzzing is a technique that is used to test the system for any bugs available. For this, we provide invalid or Fuzzy data that encounter system problems to enhance the overall robustness of your underlying programs. Fuzzing your system does not require knowing and reviewing the code that provides quick and potential bugs’ redemption. But if you have the code handy, bug detection seems an easy task.

Before fuzzing any program or application, you should know what the test cases will target part of the code. It is not always the scenario that any application will accept any kind of Fuzzy data. The data should be in the correct format to be accepted.

 

Benefits of Fuzzy Testing?

Several benefits can be leveraged using Fuzzy testing-

• Fuzzy testing allows you to enhance the software testing process.
• The bugs can be severe and are mostly used by hackers, easily detected while fuzzing the system.
• It consumes less time in detecting the type of anomaly that is unknown to the team.
• It is an effective way to encounter system or application bugs to be required at every new interface.
• You can use fuzzy testing with large projects having invalid or fuzzy inputs.
• It enables you to find those vulnerabilities that are often missed by static program analysis.
• Fuzzy testing allows you to detect system crashes and potential memory leaks.
• The test design for fuzzy testing is straightforward and free of any assumptions about system behavior.
• Also, you can conduct fuzzy testing on the closed projects to review its quality.
• Fuzzy testing helps to boost software stability and improves system security.
• Fuzzy testing tools are well-established and free of charge.

Some popular Fuzzy Testing tools

You can use a variety of web security tools to conduct Fuzzy testing. Some of the tools are mentioned below.

1. Peach Fuzzer

Peach Fuzzer is more effective than a scanner that provides more security coverage. Unlike other testing tools, peach fuzzer allows you to find known and unknown threads.

2. Spike Proxy

This tool enables you to look for application-level threats available in web applications. Spike proxy covers only basic vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

3. Webscarab

As this tool is written in Java, it is portable to any platform. This tool is used for analyzing applications that communicate using HTTP and HTTPS protocol requests.

4. OWASP WSFuzzer

This tool is a GPL’d program written in Python, which mainly targets web services.

Conclusion

In Software Engineering, Fuzz testing helps identify the presence of bugs in an application or software. Though Fuzzing cannot guarantee complete detection of bugs in an application, but by using Fuzz technique, it helps ensure that the application is more robust and more secure, as this technique helps to expose most of the common vulnerabilities.