A Survey of Fuzzing Open-Source Operating Systems

TL;DR

This survey comprehensively reviews the current state of fuzzing techniques for open-source operating systems, highlighting challenges and future research directions in this complex domain.

Contribution

It provides a systematic categorization of OS fuzzing methods and discusses challenges specific to kernel, file system, driver, and hypervisor fuzzing.

Findings

OS fuzzing faces unique challenges due to OS complexity

Current techniques are categorized based on fuzzing process stages

Future research directions include addressing kernel and hypervisor fuzzing challenges

Abstract

Vulnerabilities in open-source operating systems (OSs) pose substantial security risks to software systems, making their detection crucial. While fuzzing has been an effective vulnerability detection technique in various domains, OS fuzzing (OSF) faces unique challenges due to OS complexity and multi-layered interaction, and has not been comprehensively reviewed. Therefore, this work systematically surveys the state-of-the-art OSF techniques, categorizes them based on the general fuzzing process, and investigates challenges specific to kernel, file system, driver, and hypervisor fuzzing. Finally, future research directions for OSF are discussed.