Fault attack
Also called: Software attack
A planned, systematic form of error guessing: list likely failures, then design tests to provoke each one.
Definition
Instead of guessing ad hoc, the tester starts from a list of possible defects or failures (from experience, past bug reports or published lists) and attacks the software to see if they exist. The idea was popularized by James Whittaker's book How to Break Software.
In practice
From a list of upload failures, the tester deliberately denies the camera permission, cuts the network mid-upload and picks a 12 MB photo.
Learn it in context
Lessons that use this term.