Van-Thuan Pham

Van-Thuan co-developed fuzz-testing tools that tackle difficult testing problems: reaching specific code, handling structured files and exercising network conversations. Researchers and practitioners use and extend these open-source implementations, with the AFLNet follow-up documenting community contributions. The work connects testing research to concrete fault discovery, including AFLSmart’s reported discovery of 42 previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used software.

Van-Thuan Pham is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Melbourne, working on automated fuzz testing to improve software reliability and security. After completing a PhD in Computer Science at the National University of Singapore in July 2017, postdoctoral research appointments followed at that university and Monash University.

Van-Thuan has co-developed open-source testing tools including AFLGo, AFLSmart and AFLNet. AFLGo directs testing towards particular code locations, while AFLSmart understands file structure, helping tests get past initial input checks and reach deeper processing logic. The AFLSmart paper reports 42 previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used tools and libraries. AFLNet tests sequences of network messages, addressing software whose responses depend on earlier exchanges.

These open-source implementations provide researchers and engineers with practical tooling to adopt and expand, with a follow-up AFLNet paper documenting community contributions spanning five years. Van-Thuan also collaborated on EDEFuzz, which tests whether web interfaces expose excessive data, earning a Distinguished Paper Award at ICSE 2024.