The unprecedented growth of the software testing Dubai industry tells us that testing is indeed as important as software development itself today. Testing requires just as much effort as development, if not more. This is justified because software failure would likely be much more costly. 

Tricentis’ Software Fail Watch 2018 found that over 3 billion people were affected by software failures in 2017, and the economic losses exceed $1 trillion. This is why software testing is not to be taken lightly.   

Fuzz Testing

Major software development companies in Dubai employ a number of testing techniques throughout the software’s development lifecycle. Fuzz testing is one of the most recent testing trends that’s gaining some momentum today. 

But what exactly is fuzz testing? 

Fuzz testing is an automated testing technique where the idea is to input invalid, random, or unexpected data to a software and examining the software’s behavior thereafter. By feeding completely insensible data to the software, it has to be observed for crashes, memory leaks or failing assertions. This technique can confirm the existence of hidden vulnerabilities in the system. 

In order to identify coding errors and security holes in the system, the software has to be fed copious amounts of random data to force a crash. Running the fuzz test for weeks and not finding any bugs doesn’t mean the software is bug-free however. 

Here are a few tips to do fuzz testing properly. 

• Automate values: Fuzz testing assumes that undiscovered bugs are present in the software. It’s best to use an automated program to feed random data into the software in order to bring out those bugs. The program can feed data that the tester may not even think of to find bugs. 
  
• Feed a lot of data in a short time: The key to fuzz testing is to use an automated program that can feed large quantities of data into the system in a relatively short time. 
  
• Group failure-inducing inputs: To expose the bugs discovered by fuzz testing, failure-inducing inputs should be grouped based on their root causes. This also makes it easier for the tester to prioritize each bug individually based on the severity of risks. 
  
• Failure-detection crash: The fuzzer (what feeds the data) should be sensitive to failures. To make it sensitive, the tester can inject assertions that crash the program when a failure is detected. 
  

Conclusion

Fuzz testing ensures that the application is sturdy and secure even in the face of unexpected input. Though it’s a simple process, it can often identify serious defects and security vulnerabilities in the application that should be fixed before the software is released. Because of its many benefits and the ease of doing it early in the development cycle, fuzz testing is creating a lot of buzz among application testing companies in the Middle East.