Thinking of fuzzing applications on OS X can quickly lead to a passing conversation of “ooh exotic Mac stuff”, “lets fuzz the kernel” or it can otherwise not be thought of as an exciting target, at least for looking for crashes in stuff other than Safari or the iPhone. While there are some intricacies and nuance involved, workaround for security protections to enable debugging and finding tools that work and work well, this research will detail how it can be done in a reliable way and make the topic more tangible and easier to digest, kind of like how people think about using AFL on Linux: it “just works”.
We’ll explore some of the overlooked attack surface of file parsers and some network services on Mac, how to fuzz userland binaries and introduce a new fuzzer that makes setup and crash triage straightforward while poking at some Apple core apps and clients. Have you ever thought “This thing has got to have some bugs” but think twice because it’s only on available on Mac and not worth the effort? If so, you may now find yourself both more motivated and better equipped to do some bug hunting on the sleek and eventually accommodating Mac OS.
