Graph-Aware Fuzzing for Graph Database Management Systems

Abstract

Graph Database Management Systems (GDBMSs) are essential infrastructure for managing interconnected data. Existing GDBMS testing methods primarily rely on differential and metamorphic testing. The result consistency oracles of these methods constrain inputs to queries that are comparable across engines or transformations, leaving single engine runtime failures, such as crashes and memory errors, insufficiently explored. Developing dedicated fuzzers for GDBMSs faces two key challenges: (1) generating valid and structurally diverse queries under complex graph constraints, and (2) guiding exploration to capture topology dependent execution behavior. To address these challenges, we propose GRAF, a black box fuzzing framework for GDBMS query engines. First, GRAF introduces graph context aware query generation based on cascading dependency resolution. It instantiates parameterized Cypher skeletons generated by a Large Language Model (LLM) by jointly resolving labels, relationship types, properties, values, and variable scopes against the active graph state. This process produces structurally diverse queries while eliminating syntactic and semantic violations. Second, GRAF applies five graph specific mutation operators guided by execution state feedback, including execution time, result size, and system status. This feedback steers exploration away from unproductive queries and expensive traversals, while prioritizing local mutations around abnormal executions. We evaluated GRAF against three existing approaches on six widely used GDBMSs. GRAF consistently improves line coverage by 31.6% to 41.1% over the strongest baseline on each target. In 12 hour fuzzing, it triggered 25 unique bugs, compared to six from all baselines combined. Overall, GRAF discovered 34 previously unknown bugs, with 32 confirmed by developers and 23 assigned CVEs.