fuzzereitä

Fuzzereitä, often translated as "fuzzers" in English, are software tools used in computer security for automatic testing of software. The primary goal of fuzzing is to discover vulnerabilities and bugs by feeding unexpected, invalid, or random data into a program's input interfaces. This process is known as fuzz testing or fuzzing.

Fuzzers work by generating a large volume of malformed inputs that are then provided to the target application. These inputs are designed to be syntactically incorrect, out of bounds, or otherwise unusual, aiming to provoke unexpected behavior from the software. When the software crashes, hangs, or exhibits other abnormal behavior, it often indicates a potential security vulnerability, such as a buffer overflow, integer overflow, or denial-of-service flaw.

There are various types of fuzzers. Simple fuzzers generate entirely random data. More sophisticated fuzzers employ mutation-based techniques, where they take valid inputs and systematically modify them to create malformed test cases. Generation-based fuzzers, on the other hand, construct inputs from scratch based on a model of the expected input format. Coverage-guided fuzzing is a popular technique where the fuzzer monitors which parts of the code are executed by the generated inputs and prioritizes generating inputs that reach new code paths.

Fuzzing is an effective technique for finding bugs that might be missed by traditional testing methods. It is widely used in the software development lifecycle, particularly in identifying security weaknesses in critical software components like operating systems, web browsers, and network protocols. The discovery of vulnerabilities through fuzzing has played a significant role in improving the security of many widely used software products.