What is "fuzz testing"

n. (context computing English) A testing methodology in which random data (“fuzz”) is supplied as input to a program.

Fuzz testing or fuzzing is a software testing technique, often automated or semi-automated, that involves providing invalid, unexpected, or random data to the inputs of a computer program. The program is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes, or failing built-in code assertions or for finding potential memory leaks. Fuzzing is commonly used to test for security problems in software or computer systems. It is a form of random testing which has been used for testing hardware or software.

The field of fuzzing originated with Barton Miller at the University of Wisconsin in 1988. This early work includes not only the use of random unstructured testing, but also a systematic set of tools to evaluate a wide variety of software utilities on a variety of platforms, along with a systematic analysis of the kinds of errors that were exposed by this kind of testing. In addition, they provided public access to their tool source code, test procedures and raw result data.

There are two forms of fuzzing program, mutation-based and generation-based, which can be employed as white-, grey-, or black- box testing. File formats and network protocols are the most common targets of testing, but any type of program input can be fuzzed. Interesting inputs include environment variables, keyboard and mouse events, and sequences of API calls. Even items not normally considered "input" can be fuzzed, such as the contents of databases, shared memory, or the precise interleaving of threads.

For the purpose of security, input that crosses a trust boundary is often the most interesting. For example, it is more important to fuzz code that handles the upload of a file by any user than it is to fuzz the code that parses a configuration file that is accessible only to a privileged user.