DragonRadar: Fuzzing Linux Kernel Deployed in Cloud-Native Environment

Kata Containers is a secure container runtime with lightweight virtual machines and a customized Linux kernel optimized for cloud-native workloads, which is important for cloud-native systems. Fuzzing is a widely-used technique for detecting kernel vulnerability. However, current kernel fuzzers can't be simply applied to kernels in cloud-native environments because of the discrepancies between test and actual deployment scenarios. This paper introduces DragonRadar, a kernel fuzzing tool adapted for Kata Containers, which aligns the testing environment with cloud deployment realities. We extend to support kernel fuzzing in cloud-native environments by integrating Syzkaller's capability with a lightweight virtual machine manager called Dragonball. The evaluation shows that DragonRadar effectively identifies 25 kernel vulnerabilities in the mainline Linux kernel used in the Kata Containers environment, while maintaining code coverage similar to vanilla Syzkaller. DragonRadar is available at https://github.com/TOBESTONG//DragonRadar.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-03-04
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/saner64311.2025.00086
Primary Topic
Cloud Computing and Resource Management
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

DragonRadar: Fuzzing Linux Kernel Deployed in Cloud-Native Environment

Weibo Zhang, George Yin, Qiang Zhang, Yuheng Shen et al.
Cloud Computing and Resource Management
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DragonRadar: Fuzzing Linux Kernel Deployed in Cloud-Native Environment

Weibo Zhang, George Yin, Qiang Zhang, Yuheng Shen, Yuhan Chen, Xiaohai Shi, Runzhe Wang, Heyuan Shi, Jianzhong Liu, Chen Shi-jun
article en

Abstract

Kata Containers is a secure container runtime with lightweight virtual machines and a customized Linux kernel optimized for cloud-native workloads, which is important for cloud-native systems. Fuzzing is a widely-used technique for detecting kernel vulnerability. However, current kernel fuzzers can't be simply applied to kernels in cloud-native environments because of the discrepancies between test and actual deployment scenarios. This paper introduces DragonRadar, a kernel fuzzing tool adapted for Kata Containers, which aligns the testing environment with cloud deployment realities. We extend to support kernel fuzzing in cloud-native environments by integrating Syzkaller's capability with a lightweight virtual machine manager called Dragonball. The evaluation shows that DragonRadar effectively identifies 25 kernel vulnerabilities in the mainline Linux kernel used in the Kata Containers environment, while maintaining code coverage similar to vanilla Syzkaller. DragonRadar is available at https://github.com/TOBESTONG//DragonRadar.

Central South University (CN), Hunan University (CN), Alibaba Group (China) (CN), Tsinghua University (CN)
Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 85%
Cloud Computing and Resource Management
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