BFBTESTER(1)

BFBTESTER 💖 — the Brute Force Binary Tester

okay bestie, so this is bfbtester, a General Commands Manual situation, and it's literally the girl who pokes at your binaries until they crack. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

bfbtester — Brute Force Binary Tester. that's it, that's the name, and honestly? iconic.

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

bfbtester [-htv] [-d level] [-r rejects] [-o out-file] [-x max-execs]
-a|[-sme] files ...

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so BFBTester is great for doing quick, proactive, security checks of binary programs. no cap. it will perform checks of single and multiple argument command line overflows, and also environment variable overflows. it can also watch for tempfile creation activity to alert you — the user — about any programs using unsafe tempfile names 👀.

and like, yes, BFBTester cannot test all overflows in software, it's not a miracle worker, but it IS useful for detecting initial mistakes that can red flag dangerous software. so it's giving early warning system energy and we love that for it.

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⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

you must specify one or more of the following tests, so pick your fighter:

• -s — Single Argument Test.
• -m — Multiple Argument Test.
• -e — Environment Variable Test.
• -a — Selects all tests.

Other options, the lil extras 🎀:

• -h — Print help. she's helpful, she's polite.
• -t — Enable tempfile monitoring. watching, always watching 🦋
• -v — Print version string.
• -d level — Set debug level (default = 0, max = 2).
• -r rejects — Comma separated list of binaries to skip.
• -o out-file — Output to out-file rather than stdout.
• -x max-execs — Set maximum executables to run in parallel (default = 250). she multitasks. main character energy.
• file — Specific binary or a directory of binaries to test.

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🌈 OVERVIEW 🌈

you MUST specify at least one test to run, and you MUST specify either a binary or a directory. no skipping this part bestie, she will not run on vibes alone.

Executable selection is now done in one of several ways:

• If the executable filename is specified with a leading slash (an absolute path), no selection is used and the supplied absolute filename is used.
• If there is no leading slash in the filename, the selection is made in one of two ways (in this order):
  1. Prepend file name with $PWD and test accesiblity
  2. Search through $PATH and find first accessible executable

The first one to succeed is the executable chosen. ✨

If the filename found is a directory, we walk the directory (one level deep) looking for executable binaries. just one level. she's not going spelunking.

Symbolic links are followed. 🧚

You can specify binaries to skip (useful when loading a whole directory) by using the -r option.

The following is a crash report:

*** Crash </usr/bin/patch> ***
 args:           -D [05120]
 envs:           (null)
 Signal:         11 ( Segmentation fault )
 Core?           Yes

This means "/usr/bin/patch" crashed when fed with an "-D" and a word 5,120 characters long:

$ /usr/bin/patch -D AAA...5,120 characters...AAA

(Numbers in brackets mean replace with a word that many characters long)

⚠️ BFBTester is very CPU intensive, and will open many files, so you probably don't want to run it on a production machine during it's busiest period. Just a warning... she said it nicely but she meant it 💀

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🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

• bfbtester -s /usr/bin Run the single argument test on all binaries in folder /usr/bin.
• bfbtester -ta patch traceroute Run all tests against patch and traceroute and run the tempfile monitor.
• bfbtester -a ./bfbtester Tests bfbtester (provided it's in the same directory).
• bfbtester -r kill /usr/bin/kill Does nothing.

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

This manual page was written by Karl Soderstrom <ks@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). ty for your service king 🙇‍♀️

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and that's the whole page bestie — januari 23, 2001, Debian, General Commands Manual, BFBTESTER(1), that's a wrap. go break some binaries (responsibly) 💖✨🎀