Overview
Microsoft is referenced in the technical literature on coverage-guided fuzzing as an organization that has launched large-scale cloud-based fuzzing services. The cited 2022 GLSVLSI paper presents this as part of the broader success of fuzzing in the software domain, where fuzzing is described as effective, versatile, and comparatively easy to use for generating test inputs. [C1]
Role in fuzzing infrastructure
The paper states that Microsoft and Google launched large-scale cloud-based fuzzing services after the demonstrated achievements of fuzzing. In the same context, the paper identifies modern coverage-guided fuzzing techniques as mutation-based approaches that generate new inputs using coverage feedback, and names AFL and LLVM libFuzzer as notable representatives with strong bug-finding records. [C2]
Technical context
The evidence places Microsoft's cloud-based fuzzing activity within a larger verification landscape:
- Fuzzing has been successful in the software domain for many verification scenarios. [C1]
- State-of-the-art coverage-guided fuzzing relies on mutation-based algorithms to create new inputs. [C2]
- AFL and LLVM libFuzzer are cited as notable coverage-guided fuzzers. [C2]
- Fuzzing is also described as a continuous testing technique used in prominent software projects such as Chromium. [C3]
Relation to hardware verification research
The same paper contrasts fuzzing's software-domain success with its more limited use in hardware. It proposes applying state-of-the-art coverage-guided fuzzing to RTL processor verification, using an Instruction Set Simulator as a reference model in cross-level co-simulation and guiding the fuzzing process with coverage from both the simulator and the RTL core under test. [C4]
Significance
Within the provided evidence, Microsoft's significance is its association with the industrial scaling of fuzzing through cloud-based services. This association is used by the paper as evidence that fuzzing had achieved enough practical success to motivate large-scale service offerings by major technology organizations. [C2]