Impressions: Fuzzing

Fuzzing by Michael Sutton, Adam Greene and Pedram Amini struck me as a good overview of many types of fuzzing techniques. If you read the Amazon.com reviews, particularly the verdict by Chris Gates, you'll see what I mean. For my purposes, the degree to which the authors covered the material was just right. If you're more in the trenches with this topic, you would probably want more from a book on fuzzing.

I liked the following aspects of the book: integration of history, real examples, diversity of approaches, case studies, and examples. I thought the book was easy to read and well presented. Paired with more specific, newer books on finding vulnerabilities, I think Fuzzing is a winner.

My only real dislike involved the quotes by former US President George W. Bush at the start of each chapter. I thought they were irrelevant and a distraction.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Amazon says this book is five years old. Is that the right one, or did you read an early copy of a new edition?
9:38 AM
Richard Bejtlich said…
Yes, that's the right one. I did not read a preview of a new edition.
8:43 AM
Lynn said…
Thanks for the info, will have to check it out!
7:50 PM
Anonymous said…
The 2011 Verizon Data Breach and IBM Xforce reports were both released today. Looking forward to your comments.
2:20 PM
Pedram Amini said…
Thanks for the review! The W quotes was the most fun part of the book for me. You must have missed my dedication ;-)

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321446114/copyrightpg?portal=oreilly#X2ludGVybmFsX1ByaW50RmlkZWxpdHk/eG1saWQ9OTc4MDMyMTQ0NjExNC9jb3B5cmlnaHRwZyZpbWFnZXBhZ2U9dg==

-pedram
10:34 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more