72,115 research outputs found
Runtime Contracts Checker: Increasing Robustness of Component-Based Software Systems
Software Systems are becoming increasingly complex leading to new Validation &Verification challenges. Model checking and testing techniques are used at development time while runtime verification aims to verify that a system satisfies a given property at runtime. This second technique complements the first one. This paper presents a runtime contract checker (RCC) which checks a component-based software system's contracts defined at design phase. We address embedded systems whose software components are designed by Unified Modelling Language-State Machines (UML-SM) and their internal information can be observable in terms of model elements at runtime. Our previous research work, CRESCO (C++ REflective State-Machines based observable software COmponents) framework, generates software components that provide this observability. The checker uses software components' internal status information to check system level safety contracts. The checker detects when a system contract is violated and starts a safeStop process to prevent the hazardous scenario. Thus, the robustness of the system is increased
Compositional Verification for Autonomous Systems with Deep Learning Components
As autonomy becomes prevalent in many applications, ranging from
recommendation systems to fully autonomous vehicles, there is an increased need
to provide safety guarantees for such systems. The problem is difficult, as
these are large, complex systems which operate in uncertain environments,
requiring data-driven machine-learning components. However, learning techniques
such as Deep Neural Networks, widely used today, are inherently unpredictable
and lack the theoretical foundations to provide strong assurance guarantees. We
present a compositional approach for the scalable, formal verification of
autonomous systems that contain Deep Neural Network components. The approach
uses assume-guarantee reasoning whereby {\em contracts}, encoding the
input-output behavior of individual components, allow the designer to model and
incorporate the behavior of the learning-enabled components working
side-by-side with the other components. We illustrate the approach on an
example taken from the autonomous vehicles domain
Requirements Analysis of a Quad-Redundant Flight Control System
In this paper we detail our effort to formalize and prove requirements for
the Quad-redundant Flight Control System (QFCS) within NASA's Transport Class
Model (TCM). We use a compositional approach with assume-guarantee contracts
that correspond to the requirements for software components embedded in an AADL
system architecture model. This approach is designed to exploit the
verification effort and artifacts that are already part of typical software
verification processes in the avionics domain. Our approach is supported by an
AADL annex that allows specification of contracts along with a tool, called
AGREE, for performing compositional verification. The goal of this paper is to
show the benefits of a compositional verification approach applied to a
realistic avionics system and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the AGREE
tool in performing this analysis.Comment: Accepted to NASA Formal Methods 201
A Concurrent Perspective on Smart Contracts
In this paper, we explore remarkable similarities between multi-transactional
behaviors of smart contracts in cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and classical
problems of shared-memory concurrency. We examine two real-world examples from
the Ethereum blockchain and analyzing how they are vulnerable to bugs that are
closely reminiscent to those that often occur in traditional concurrent
programs. We then elaborate on the relation between observable contract
behaviors and well-studied concurrency topics, such as atomicity, interference,
synchronization, and resource ownership. The described
contracts-as-concurrent-objects analogy provides deeper understanding of
potential threats for smart contracts, indicate better engineering practices,
and enable applications of existing state-of-the-art formal verification
techniques.Comment: 15 page
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