Google buys GraphicsFuzz, bringing fuzzy logic and metamorphic testing to Android graphics drivers

The latest addition to the list of companies acquired by Google is a startup called GraphicsFuzz. The team at GraphicsFuzz consisting of Alastair Donaldson, Hugues Evrard and Paul Thomson, will be joining Google’s Android Graphics Team to integrate their graphics driver testing technology within the Android ecosystem.

What does GraphicsFuzz do?

GraphicsFuzz is an automated testing technology, which uses fuzzy logic and metamorphic testing to find the reliability and security-related issues in the graphics driver. The following is an overview of the logic it uses:

Reference shader: It starts with a reference shader program, which basically is a program defined by the user to be run on some stage of a graphics processor.

Source: GraphicsFuzz

Variant shaders: To obtain variant shaders with significantly different source code that still has the same effect, GraphicsFuzz applies semantics-preserving source code transformations. These variant shaders will have the same image as the reference.

Source: GraphicsFuzz

Bug finding: If a variant shader leads to different image then this indicates that we have detected a graphics driver bug.

Source: GraphicsFuzz

Intelligent Reducer: The variant shader is of thousands of lines coming from the semantics-preserving transformations. Intelligent Reducer removes irrelevant codes to the bug and then we obtain a small difference which is enough to expose the driver issue.

Source: GraphicsFuzz

What does GraphicsFuzz bring to the Android testing ecosystem?

They have proven their capabilities by exposing bugs in large number of graphics drivers across mobile and desktop platforms.

For instance, they were awarded a bug bounty by Google for discovering a security issue in the ARM driver for the Samsung Galaxy S6. While testing of the Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy S9, GraphicsFuzz found an error in the Adreno 630’s graphics driver. This error could cause a whole-phone reboot via a valid WebGL Internet page when using the stock Samsung Internet browser.

This acquisition will surely prove helpful to Google in developing secure and reliable graphics drivers for Android systems to provide a better user experience.

Head over to GraphicsFuzz’s official website to know more about this announcement.

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