Instrumentation
TechniqueIn the context of emulation-based fuzzing, instrumentation refers to the techniques inserted into an emulator to extract feedback and guide input mutations toward effective test cases. The Icicle emulator demonstrates an architecture-agnostic approach to instrumentation that allows instrumentation to be added once and reused across diverse instruction set architectures, addressing a key limitation of prior emulation-based fuzzers that tied instrumentation to specific ISAs such as x86/x86-64 or ARM/AArch64.
WIKI
Overview
In emulation-based fuzzing, instrumentation refers to the code or hooks inserted into an emulator to extract feedback (for example, coverage information) that guides input mutations toward generating effective test cases. The authors of Icicle describe instrumentation as being "at the core of modern fuzzers" because it enables feedback-driven mutation strategies on binaries that lack source code or that target embedded architectures where direct execution on real hardware is impractical.