Dual-Core Hierarchical Fuzzing Framework for Efficient and Secure Firmware Over-the-Air

As the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices becomes extensive, ensuring their security has become a critical issue for both individuals and organizations, particularly as these devices collect, transmit, and analyze diverse data. The firmware of IoT devices plays a key role in ensuring system security; any vulnerabilities in the firmware can expose the system to threats such as hacking or malware infections. Consequently, fuzzing is used to analyze firmware vulnerabilities during the update process. However, conventional single-core and random fuzzing-based firmware vulnerability analysis techniques suffer from low efficiency, limited security, and high memory usage. Each time the firmware is updated, the entire file—including previously analyzed code—must be reanalyzed. Moreover, given that the firmware is not layered, unaffected code segments are redundantly reanalyzed. To address these limitations, this study proposes a dual-core-based hierarchical partial fuzzing technique for wireless networks using dual cores. Experimental results show that the proposed technique detects 11 more unique crashes within 300 s and finds 2435 more total crashes than that of the conventional scheme. It also reduces memory usage by 35 KiB. The proposed technique improves the speed, effectiveness, and reliability of firmware updates and vulnerability detection.