Eduardo Blázquez is the author of Fuzzing Against the Machine, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Eduardo: My friend Antonio had the idea of writing a book, and I thought it would be a good way to learn about the topic. I also have another friend who published a book with Packt, and I told it to Antonio who thought it was also a good idea to contact a publisher, then after a little more than a year, the book became true.
Q: What is the name of your book?
Eduardo: Fuzzing Against the Machine: Automate vulnerability research with emulated IoT devices on QEMU.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Eduardo: I do research on the area of binary analysis, and Android ecosystem, I have been doing research for 5 or 6 years.
Q: Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Eduardo: Yes, https://fare9.github.io/.
Q: What key takeaways do you want readers to come away with from the book?
Eduardo: Fuzzing is commonly a topic difficult to approach at the beginning, so with this book we want to make the reader not being afraid of starting working in this topic.
Q: Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Eduardo: I think many of the recommendations can be found in our book.
Q. Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Eduardo: Deadlines are always a challenge, but with a good schedule and working with someone was a great help to overcome this challenge.
Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Eduardo: While working for the first time with a publisher is difficult, I think communication with Packt was fast and most of our doubts were answered fast, I think the experience was good, and I recommend it to authors who want to publish!
Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Eduardo: On the topic of fuzzing there almost no literature, so in some way I think we have given the most practical one on the topic, making it interesting for anyone in the area of security.
Q. What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?
Eduardo: Binary Analysis, Static Binary Analysis, Programming.
Q. What advice would you give to readers jumping into this technology? Do you have any top tips?
Eduardo: Read the documentation of the fuzzing tools, choose a software that they think can be easy to start with, and make it crash!
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Eduardo: No.
Q. What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Eduardo: I think since many different processors are being used nowadays, emulation is more needed than ever, also there will be more software, and the written software will be bigger, making fuzzing a technology that every developer will have to use for testing their software, since manual testing will not be feasible.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Eduardo: Mostly I dedicated some mornings per week for writing the book, since I could do both, my job and writing the book.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Eduardo: Mostly I follow different webpages from companies who work on topics I like.
Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, mention them below.
Eduardo: Here you go: https://twitter.com/Farenain.
Q: What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Eduardo: Just try to focus on the document, and write a draft of the points you want to cover, once done that, start writing the chapter paragraph by paragraph.
You can find Eduardo’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
