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Anatomy and Taxonomy of a Fuzzer

Fuzzing is an increasingly popular method for software and hardware quality assurance. A fuzzer is a program or framework that generates pseudo-random inputs, evaluates them, and measures the success or failure of the evaluations. This may be a greatly oversimplified explanation, but it bears the familiar look and feel of test vector sets and unit test frameworks used by engineers since the advent of computers.

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CITL Static Analysis Release

Today CITL is open sourcing our static analysis tooling. Doing so we hope to share our methods for analyzing binary hardening with a wider audience. Our static analysis tooling ingests binary files (PE/ELF/MachO), of multiple architectures (ELF supports: x86, x86-64, arm, arm/thumb, aarch64, mips, ppc) and reports on the hardening of the binary. It supports a range of different hardening techniques via its plugable analyzer model.

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CITL Fuzzer Early Data

CITL’s primary research goal has been focused around if we could formalize a technique security practitioners use for identifying potentially vulnerable code. We wanted to know if we could automatically detect patterns that are used for prioritization in a standard security audit? We started with simple questions based on common indicators. For example: “Does using strcpy() more often mean that software will crash more?”.

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A Case for Improving Security Ergonomics of Compilers

by Sarah Zatko We published a study a while back showing the failure of the IoT industry to adhere to basic build safety best practices over the past 15 years. In the light of this failure, I wanted to unpack what some of the root causes might be, and make a case for why better usability and transparency for security features in compiler toolchains would help.

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Binary Hardening in IoT products

Last year, the team at CITL looked into the state of binary hardening features in IoT firmware. Since then we’ve added more vendors and refreshed our analytic techniques. This post will catch you up on the latest findings and developments.

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CITL Status Report

Some people have been asking when they're going to get to see all the great output and data we're generating, so this seemed like a good time to explain where we're at right now.

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Other Industries that Inspired Us

Evaluating the risk profile of software is a technically complex task, but there are lots of other industries where consumers have to engage in complex decision-making.

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CITL at Black Hat and Def Con!

The first public talks about CITL, including details about our metrics and preliminary data, will be at this year's Black Hat and Def Con!

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