KSG: Augmenting Kernel Fuzzing with System Call Specification Generation

Kernel fuzzing is a dynamic testing technique that has successfully found numerous kernel vulnerabilities. However, existing kernel fuzzers, such as Syzkaller, depend on system call specifications to generate test cases. Writing such specifications requires an immense amount of domain knowledge while being extremely laborious. Meanwhile, automated generation of the specification is still an open problem due to the complexity of the kernel, including entry function extraction and input type identification. As a result, the current amount of system call information is insufficient to test the entire kernel code base thoroughly. Syzkaller covers an average of 38% of Linux kernel code with current Syzlang specifications for a prolonged time of fuzzing.

In this paper, we propose KSG to generate system call specifications for kernel fuzzers automatically. First, it utilizes probe-based tracing to extract entry functions accurately. Then, it uses path-sensitive analysis to collect precise input types and range constraints in each execution path of entry functions. Based on the aforementioned information, KSG generates specifications in the domain language Syzlang, which is used by most kernel fuzzers. We evaluated KSG on several versions of the Linux kernel. It automatically generated 2433 unique specifications. Leveraging the newly generated specifications, Syzkaller and Moonshine achieved coverage improvements of 22% and 23% respectively. Furthermore, our approach assisted fuzzers to discover 26 previously unknown bugs, where 13 and 6 bugs were fixed and assigned with CVEs, respectively.