An Intel project developed the past several years was kAFL-Fuzzer as a hardware-assisted feedback fuzzer for x86 virtual machines (VMs) to help with security. While it saw a lot of work in prior years, development activity slowed down last year and now the project has been formally ended.

Joining [1]other Intel open-source projects ended in recent months amid [2]various open-source setbacks over the past year due to layoffs and corporate restructuring, the kAF-Fuzzer project has been formally archived. The kAFL-Fuzzer was a fuzzer for x86 VMs and worked on by Intel engineers as part of their security efforts into virtual machine introspection and fuzzing.

The [3]kafl.fuzzer GitHub repository was archived this week by Intel with the usual notice that the project is now unmaintained.

The kafl.fuzzer is the fuzzer front-end to the project. Notably the [4]kAFL repository hasn't been archived although hasn't seen any commits in months besides documentation and CI updates. The [5]kafl.linux repository also isn't archived either but hasn't seen any commits since last year. But with the fuzzer front-end now archived following no recent activity, this looks to be another area that Intel has been cutting back on, which is too bad considering the security aspect and cloud/VM usage continuing to be so prevalent these days.

Those wanting to learn more about what was the Intel Labs kAFL project can do so via [6]the GitHub documentation area for fuzzing VM kernels / firmware / operating systems. kAFL itself was born out of [7]university research work from Ruhr-Universität Bochum.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Archives-Optane-Ansible

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-OpenPGL-New-Home

[3] https://github.com/IntelLabs/kafl.fuzzer

[4] https://github.com/IntelLabs/kAFL

[5] https://github.com/IntelLabs/kafl.linux

[6] https://intellabs.github.io/kAFL/

[7] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical-sessions/presentation/schumilo