Fuzzing Android: Finding Vulnerabilties in Userspace and the Kernal - Softcover

Hamzeh Et Al. Zaway; Xing, Xuan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1718505299 ISBN 13: 9781718505292

Publisher: No Starch Press, 2026

Synopsis

The operational playbook for fuzzing Android, from Binder services to the Linux kernel, by Google's Android Security Team.

Android is three billion devices of hardened, audited, relentlessly defended code, and fuzzing brings it down anyway. The method is almost crude: bury the system in malformed input and wait for the rare case that cracks something open. A crash is the tell, and behind it is usually a way in.

This is the book from the Google engineers who do that for a living. They've fuzzed Android's Binder IPC, the Pixel modem, GPU drivers, and kernel components, and found root-level vulnerabilities the architecture was supposed to keep out of reach. Now they show you how they work.

Most fuzzing books stop at the concept. This one runs the campaign. You'll target the IPC layer with libFuzzer and AFL++, stand up a reproducible environment across emulators and real devices, instrument native code and system services for coverage, triage and reproduce crashes, and extend Syzkaller to reach new kernel drivers. Just as important, you'll build the judgment that separates a fuzzer that finds bugs from one that only makes noise: which targets are worth your time, when to bypass runtime checks, and how to keep a campaign disciplined instead of chaotic.

No other book covers Android fuzzing from userspace services through the kernel. The existing titles stop at app-layer pentesting or teach general fuzzing with no Android specificity. This is the one written by the people who actually found the bugs.

With a foreword by David Kleidermacher, Google's VP of Platforms Security and Privacy.

For security researchers, OEM security engineers, and bug bounty hunters who target the world's largest mobile platform and want the operational playbook rather than the tour.

About this title

About the Author

Hamzeh Zawawy, PhD; Kris Alder; and Cory Barker work on the Android Blue Team, doing platform hardening, kernel security, fuzzing, and AI-driven vulnerability remediation.

Xuan Xing and Eugene Rodionov, PhD, specialize in offensive security research, fuzzing low-level Android and Pixel components, and GPU/Binder exploitation.

Steven Moreland spent nearly a decade leading Android C++ service fuzzing and redesigning its inter-process communication models.

Edition details

• Publisher: No Starch Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1718505299
• ISBN 13: 9781718505292
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216