byron 0.8a1.dev67

An evolutionary source-code fuzzer

byron 🖋

Built on MicroGP technology

Byron is a source code fuzzer designed to support assembly and high-level languages. It starts by generating a set of random programs, which are then iteratively improved by an evolutionary algorithm. Internally, it encodes candidate solutions as typed, directed multigraphs, and can effectively handle complex, realistic structures containing local and global variables, conditional and looping statements, and subroutines.

Programs can be evaluated using a user-defined Python function or an external tool, such as an interpreter or a simulator. Different types of parallelization are supported out of the box, from simple multithreading to the creation of temporary directories where multiple subprocesses are concurrently spawned.

:package: The Python package is available on PyPi; this repo is only useful if you want to hack the code.

TL;DR

• Byron is currently in alpha and under active development
• The default branch is always the more stable
• Do not clone experimental branches exp/* unless you really know what you are doing
• Follow this style guide and keep the code formatted with Ruff
• Follow this convention when drafting commit messages
• Write as few lines of code and as many lines of comments as possible (ie. use builtins, exploit generators and list comprehension)
• Be paranoid (cit. "I need someone to show me the things")
• Use pytest and Coverage.py for unit testing (ie. coverage run --module pytest --all)
• Use Ruff for linting and mypy for type checking
• Use direnv to patch environment variables
• It may be wise to contact Giovanni before trying to change anything

Contacts

• Giovanni Squillero :email: :house:
• Alberto Tonda :email: :house:

Main Contributors

Licence

Copyright (c) 2023-24 Giovanni Squillero and Alberto Tonda
Byron is free and open-source software, and it is distributed under the permissive Apache License 2.0.