Truman: Constructing Device Behavior Models from OS Drivers to Fuzz Virtual Devices

Virtual devices are a large attack surface of hypervisors. Vulnerabilities in virtual devices may enable attackers to jailbreak hypervisors or even endanger co-located virtual machines. While fuzzing has discovered vulnerabilities in virtual devices across both open-source and closed-source hypervisors, the efficiency of these virtual device fuzzers remains limited because they are unaware of the complex behaviors of virtual devices in general. We present Truman, a novel universal fuzzing engine that automatically infers dependencies from open-source OS drivers to construct device behavior models (DBMs) for virtual device fuzzing, regardless of whether target virtual devices are open-source or binaries. The DBM includes inter- and intra-message dependencies and fine-grained state dependency of virtual device messages. Based on the DBM, Truman generates and mutates quality seeds that satisfy the dependencies encoded in the DBM. We evaluate the prototype of Truman on the latest version of hypervisors. In terms of coverage, Truman outperformed start-of-the-art fuzzers for 19/29 QEMU devices and obtained a relative coverage boost of 34% compared to Morphuzz for virtio devices. Additionally, Truman discovered 54 new bugs in QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware Workstation Pro, and Parallels, with 6 CVEs assigned.

Authors

Publication Details

Published
2025-01-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2025.240301
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Cloud Computing and Resource Management
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
3.25

Funders

Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
article

Truman: Constructing Device Behavior Models from OS Drivers to Fuzz Virtual Devices

Zheming Li, Wende Tan, Mathias Payer, Zhao Ma et al.
1 citations
Cloud Computing and Resource Management
3.25
article

Truman: Constructing Device Behavior Models from OS Drivers to Fuzz Virtual Devices

Zheming Li, Wende Tan, Mathias Payer, Zhao Ma, Qiang Liu, Chao Zhang, Tingting Yin
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Virtual devices are a large attack surface of hypervisors. Vulnerabilities in virtual devices may enable attackers to jailbreak hypervisors or even endanger co-located virtual machines. While fuzzing has discovered vulnerabilities in virtual devices across both open-source and closed-source hypervisors, the efficiency of these virtual device fuzzers remains limited because they are unaware of the complex behaviors of virtual devices in general. We present Truman, a novel universal fuzzing engine that automatically infers dependencies from open-source OS drivers to construct device behavior models (DBMs) for virtual device fuzzing, regardless of whether target virtual devices are open-source or binaries. The DBM includes inter- and intra-message dependencies and fine-grained state dependency of virtual device messages. Based on the DBM, Truman generates and mutates quality seeds that satisfy the dependencies encoded in the DBM. We evaluate the prototype of Truman on the latest version of hypervisors. In terms of coverage, Truman outperformed start-of-the-art fuzzers for 19/29 QEMU devices and obtained a relative coverage boost of 34% compared to Morphuzz for virtio devices. Additionally, Truman discovered 54 new bugs in QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware Workstation Pro, and Parallels, with 6 CVEs assigned.

European Commission, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Tsinghua University
Openalex Percentile: Top 10%
Cloud Computing and Resource Management
3.25
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.

Truman: Constructing Device Behavior Models from OS Drivers to Fuzz Virtual Devices — Zheming Li, Wende Tan, et al. · (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS