Tool Support for Fuzz Testing of Component-Based System Adaptation Policies

Self-adaptation enables component-based systems to evolve by means of dynamic reconfigurations that can modify their architecture and/or behaviour at runtime. In this context, we use adaptation policies to trigger reconfigurations that must only happen in suitable circumstances, thus avoiding unwanted behaviours. A tool (cbsdr, standing for Component-Based System Dynamic Reconfigurations) supporting both the Fractal and FraSCAti component frameworks was developed, but the testing of the robustness of new adaptation policies was not easy. This is the reason to add to our implementation a new behavioural fuzzing tool. While fuzzing consists of sending invalid data to a system under test to find weaknesses that may cause a crash or an abnormal reaction, behavioural fuzzing sends invalid sequences of valid data. Valid traces are modified using fuzzing techniques to generate test cases that can be replayed on a dummy system using the adaptation policies to be tested while focusing on interesting regions of specific data sequences.