A Novel Network Protocol Syntax Extracting Method for Grammar-Based Fuzzing

Abstract

Network protocol syntax information plays a crucial role in grammar-based fuzzing. Current network protocol syntax extraction methods are less versatile, inefficient, and the extracted information is not comprehensive. This paper proposes a novel method for extracting syntax information, which innovatively extracts network protocol syntax from Wireshark protocol dissector files. The extracted syntax information includes packet types of the protocol, the constituent fields of each packet type, and detailed attributes of each field. Based on this method, an automated system for network protocol syntax information extraction was developed. The experiment was conducted with this system on a variety of protocols including DCCP, DNP3.0, Modbus TCP, and S7COMM. The experimental results show that compared with the current methods, our method has a better performance in terms of efficiency and versatility and at the same time ensures the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the extracted syntax information.

Keywords

• network security
• Wireshark
• fuzzing
• network protocol
• protocol syntax extraction