Fuzz testing is a technique for automatically uncovering bugs in software. The problem is that it’s a pain to set up. Read any fuzz testing tuto

Using Nix to Fuzz Test a PDF Parser (Part One)

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2024-10-23 15:00:02

Fuzz testing is a technique for automatically uncovering bugs in software. The problem is that it’s a pain to set up. Read any fuzz testing tutorial, and the first task is an hour of building tools from source and chasing down dependencies upon dependencies.

I recently found that Nix eliminates a lot of the gruntwork from fuzz testing. I created a Nix configuration that kicks off a fuzz testing workflow with a single command. The only dependencies are Nix and git.

I used my Nix workflow to find an unpatched bug in a PDF renderer, even though I’m a beginner at both Nix and fuzz testing.

The command should work on any Linux system with Nix installed, and maybe MacOS, too. After a few minutes of building, you should see a terminal UI that looks like this:

If you want to change the fuzzing options or test a different version of the PDF reader, it’s as simple as editing a single file.