Towards Path-Aware Coverage-Guided Fuzzing
Automated fuzz testing is now standard practice, yet key blind spots persist. Coverage-guided fuzzers typically rely on edge coverage as a lightweight proxy for program behavior. However, this metric captures path variations only weakly: it cannot differentiate executions that follow distinct control-flow paths but traverse the same edges—causing many path-dependent bugs to go undetected. Path awareness would offer a richer coverage view but has been considered too costly for fuzzing.We introduce a lightweight method for tracking intra-procedural execution paths, enabling efficient path-aware feedback. This enhances the fuzzer’s ability to detect subtle bugs, even in well-tested software. To counter the resulting seed explosion, we evaluate two strategies—culling and opportunistic path-aware fuzzing—that balance precision and throughput. Our findings show that path-aware fuzzing, when properly guided, uncovers more bugs and reveals untapped potential in fuzzing research.
Cite this item
Priamo, G., D’Elia, D. C., Payer, M., & Querzoni, L. (2026). Towards Path-Aware Coverage-Guided Fuzzing. 2026 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO), 84–97. https://doi.org/10.1109/cgo68049.2026.11395191
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2026-01-31
979-8-3315-9288-2
84
97
REVIEWED
EPFL
| Event name | Event acronym | Event place | Event date |
CGO 2026 | Sydney, Australia | 2026-01-31 - 2026-02-04 | |