I think the article is a tutorial. It doesn't appear to present a new result.

It's moderately-well-known that .pyc files execute arbitrary code (not just arbitrary Python code) inside the Python process. (See e.g. https://docs.python.org/2/library/marshal.html#module-marsha..., "Warning: The marshal module [i.e. loading .pyc files] is not intended to be secure against erroneous or maliciously constructed data. Never unmarshal data received from an untrusted or unauthenticated source." It is nice to see that afl can re-discover this issue, but I'm pretty sure it's not new.

Oh my, I finished this quite late last night and forgot to add a conclusion. I thought the post was getting a bit lengthy, and the next step is to use gdb to dive into the crashes + make a patch, which I feel is too much for one post.

So tune in next week :)