11,063 research outputs found
Proving Safety with Trace Automata and Bounded Model Checking
Loop under-approximation is a technique that enriches C programs with
additional branches that represent the effect of a (limited) range of loop
iterations. While this technique can speed up the detection of bugs
significantly, it introduces redundant execution traces which may complicate
the verification of the program. This holds particularly true for verification
tools based on Bounded Model Checking, which incorporate simplistic heuristics
to determine whether all feasible iterations of a loop have been considered.
We present a technique that uses \emph{trace automata} to eliminate redundant
executions after performing loop acceleration. The method reduces the diameter
of the program under analysis, which is in certain cases sufficient to allow a
safety proof using Bounded Model Checking. Our transformation is precise---it
does not introduce false positives, nor does it mask any errors. We have
implemented the analysis as a source-to-source transformation, and present
experimental results showing the applicability of the technique
Fully Symbolic TCTL Model Checking for Incomplete Timed Systems
In this paper we present a fully symbolic TCTL model checking algorithm for incomplete timed systems. Our algorithm is able to prove that a TCTL property is violated or satisfied regardless of the implementation of unknown timed components in the system. For that purpose the algorithm computes over- approximations of sets of states fulfilling a TCTL property φ for at least one implementation of the unknown components and under-approximations of sets of states fulfilling φ for all possible implementations of the unknown components. The algorithm works on a symbolic model for timed systems, called a finite state machine with time (FSMT), and makes use of fully symbolic state set representations containing both the clock values and the state variables. In order to handle incomplete timed systems our model checking algorithm deals with different communication methods between the system and its unknown components, e.g. shared integer variables and urgent and non-urgent synchronization. Our experimental results demonstrate that it is possible to prove interesting properties at early stages of the design when parts of the overall system may not yet be finished. Additionally, fading out components of a large system may dramatically reduce the complexity of the system and thus the effort for verification
Predicate Abstraction with Indexed Predicates
Predicate abstraction provides a powerful tool for verifying properties of
infinite-state systems using a combination of a decision procedure for a subset
of first-order logic and symbolic methods originally developed for finite-state
model checking. We consider models containing first-order state variables,
where the system state includes mutable functions and predicates. Such a model
can describe systems containing arbitrarily large memories, buffers, and arrays
of identical processes. We describe a form of predicate abstraction that
constructs a formula over a set of universally quantified variables to describe
invariant properties of the first-order state variables. We provide a formal
justification of the soundness of our approach and describe how it has been
used to verify several hardware and software designs, including a
directory-based cache coherence protocol.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, short version appeared in International
Conference on Verification, Model Checking and Abstract Interpretation
(VMCAI'04), LNCS 2937, pages = 267--28
A Survey of Symbolic Execution Techniques
Many security and software testing applications require checking whether
certain properties of a program hold for any possible usage scenario. For
instance, a tool for identifying software vulnerabilities may need to rule out
the existence of any backdoor to bypass a program's authentication. One
approach would be to test the program using different, possibly random inputs.
As the backdoor may only be hit for very specific program workloads, automated
exploration of the space of possible inputs is of the essence. Symbolic
execution provides an elegant solution to the problem, by systematically
exploring many possible execution paths at the same time without necessarily
requiring concrete inputs. Rather than taking on fully specified input values,
the technique abstractly represents them as symbols, resorting to constraint
solvers to construct actual instances that would cause property violations.
Symbolic execution has been incubated in dozens of tools developed over the
last four decades, leading to major practical breakthroughs in a number of
prominent software reliability applications. The goal of this survey is to
provide an overview of the main ideas, challenges, and solutions developed in
the area, distilling them for a broad audience.
The present survey has been accepted for publication at ACM Computing
Surveys. If you are considering citing this survey, we would appreciate if you
could use the following BibTeX entry: http://goo.gl/Hf5FvcComment: This is the authors pre-print copy. If you are considering citing
this survey, we would appreciate if you could use the following BibTeX entry:
http://goo.gl/Hf5Fv
Taming Numbers and Durations in the Model Checking Integrated Planning System
The Model Checking Integrated Planning System (MIPS) is a temporal least
commitment heuristic search planner based on a flexible object-oriented
workbench architecture. Its design clearly separates explicit and symbolic
directed exploration algorithms from the set of on-line and off-line computed
estimates and associated data structures. MIPS has shown distinguished
performance in the last two international planning competitions. In the last
event the description language was extended from pure propositional planning to
include numerical state variables, action durations, and plan quality objective
functions. Plans were no longer sequences of actions but time-stamped
schedules. As a participant of the fully automated track of the competition,
MIPS has proven to be a general system; in each track and every benchmark
domain it efficiently computed plans of remarkable quality. This article
introduces and analyzes the most important algorithmic novelties that were
necessary to tackle the new layers of expressiveness in the benchmark problems
and to achieve a high level of performance. The extensions include critical
path analysis of sequentially generated plans to generate corresponding optimal
parallel plans. The linear time algorithm to compute the parallel plan bypasses
known NP hardness results for partial ordering by scheduling plans with respect
to the set of actions and the imposed precedence relations. The efficiency of
this algorithm also allows us to improve the exploration guidance: for each
encountered planning state the corresponding approximate sequential plan is
scheduled. One major strength of MIPS is its static analysis phase that grounds
and simplifies parameterized predicates, functions and operators, that infers
knowledge to minimize the state description length, and that detects domain
object symmetries. The latter aspect is analyzed in detail. MIPS has been
developed to serve as a complete and optimal state space planner, with
admissible estimates, exploration engines and branching cuts. In the
competition version, however, certain performance compromises had to be made,
including floating point arithmetic, weighted heuristic search exploration
according to an inadmissible estimate and parameterized optimization
- …