Silly question about origin of afl's name

[steve...@gmail.com]

First of all, props to Mr. Zalewski, this fuzzer is a seriously kickass little project. 

I really want to know more about why it has been given the name that it was given. Hopefully you can shed some light on it. Does "Lop" refer to the clever "pruning" that it does?

[Michal Zalewski]

> I really want to know more about why it has been given the name that it was
> given. Hopefully you can shed some light on it. Does "Lop" refer to the
> clever "pruning" that it does?

I'm afraid I'm going to let you down =) It traces back to "Bunny the
Fuzzer", my previous (2007) take on instrumentation-guided fuzzing.
The thought process behind that name was essentially:

- Fuzzing...
- Mmm... fuzzy...
- What's fuzzy?
- Bunnies! Bunnies are fuzzy!
- How would you name a fuzzer?
- Mmm.... Bunny... Bunny the Fuzzer!

So, anyway, Bunny wasn't particularly great, but when I decided to
revisit the idea many years later, I felt that it's appropriate to
allude to that in some way...

- Mmm... bunnies...
- Bunnies are rabbits, right?
- Let's look up rabbit breeds on Wikipedia...
- Liptov baldspotted rabbit... blanc de Termonde... Britannia petite... nah...
- American fuzzy lop? Heck yeah, that sounds patriotic!

/mz

[steve...@gmail.com]

Hahaha I had only ever searched google for "afl", so I finally saw some pictures of these crazy fuzzy bunnies after seeing your response (and initially remaining perplexed). 

[Peter Gutmann]

Michal Zalewski <lca...@gmail.com> writes:
>> I really want to know more about why it has been given the name that it was
>> given. Hopefully you can shed some light on it. Does "Lop" refer to the
>> clever "pruning" that it does?
>
>I'm afraid I'm going to let you down =) It traces back to "Bunny the Fuzzer",
>my previous (2007) take on instrumentation-guided fuzzing.

I'm waiting to see one called The Fuzz...

Peter.

[Jonathan Neuschäfer]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 10:53:21PM -0700, steve...@gmail.com wrote:
> I really want to know more about why it has been given the name that it was
> given. Hopefully you can shed some light on it. Does "Lop" refer to the
> clever "pruning" that it does?

I initially read it as "fuzzy loop", because, you know, at the at the
heart of a fuzzer there's a loop testing one input after another. :-)


jn

[Prasad Shenoy]

Ratproxy
Skipfish..

There is a pattern here..a fuzzy one :)

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