Foundational Extensible Corecursion

This paper presents a formalized framework for defining corecursive functions safely in a total setting, based on corecursion up-to and relational parametricity. The end product is a general corecursor that allows corecursive (and even recursive) calls under well-behaved operations, including constructors. Corecursive functions that are well behaved can be registered as such, thereby increasing the corecursor's expressiveness. The metatheory is formalized in the Isabelle proof assistant and forms the core of a prototype tool. The corecursor is derived from first principles, without requiring new axioms or extensions of the logic

Extending Nunchaku to Dependent Type Theory

Nunchaku is a new higher-order counterexample generator based on a sequence of transformations from polymorphic higher-order logic to first-order logic. Unlike its predecessor Nitpick for Isabelle, it is designed as a stand-alone tool, with frontends for various proof assistants. In this short paper, we present some ideas to extend Nunchaku with partial support for dependent types and type classes, to make frontends for Coq and other systems based on dependent type theory more useful.Comment: In Proceedings HaTT 2016, arXiv:1606.0542

Applying Formal Methods to Networking: Theory, Techniques and Applications

Despite its great importance, modern network infrastructure is remarkable for the lack of rigor in its engineering. The Internet which began as a research experiment was never designed to handle the users and applications it hosts today. The lack of formalization of the Internet architecture meant limited abstractions and modularity, especially for the control and management planes, thus requiring for every new need a new protocol built from scratch. This led to an unwieldy ossified Internet architecture resistant to any attempts at formal verification, and an Internet culture where expediency and pragmatism are favored over formal correctness. Fortunately, recent work in the space of clean slate Internet design---especially, the software defined networking (SDN) paradigm---offers the Internet community another chance to develop the right kind of architecture and abstractions. This has also led to a great resurgence in interest of applying formal methods to specification, verification, and synthesis of networking protocols and applications. In this paper, we present a self-contained tutorial of the formidable amount of work that has been done in formal methods, and present a survey of its applications to networking.Comment: 30 pages, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

From LCF to Isabelle/HOL

Interactive theorem provers have developed dramatically over the past four decades, from primitive beginnings to today's powerful systems. Here, we focus on Isabelle/HOL and its distinctive strengths. They include automatic proof search, borrowing techniques from the world of first order theorem proving, but also the automatic search for counterexamples. They include a highly readable structured language of proofs and a unique interactive development environment for editing live proof documents. Everything rests on the foundation conceived by Robin Milner for Edinburgh LCF: a proof kernel, using abstract types to ensure soundness and eliminate the need to store proofs. Compared with the research prototypes of the 1970s, Isabelle is a practical and versatile tool. It is used by system designers, mathematicians and many others

A Prototype Embedding of Bluespec System Verilog in the PVS Theorem Prover

Bluespec SystemVerilog (BSV) is a Hardware Description Language based on the guarded action model of concurrency. It has an elegant semantics, which makes it well suited for formal reasoning. To date, a number of BSV designs have been verified with hand proofs, but little work has been conducted on the application of automated reasoning. We present a prototype shallow embedding of BSV in the PVS theorem prover. Our embedding is compatible with the PVS model checker, which can automatically prove an important class of theorems, and can also be used in conjunction with the powerful proof strategies of PVS to verify a broader class of properties than can be achieved with model checking alone

Coalgebraic Methods for Object-Oriented Specification

This thesis is about coalgebraic methods in software specification and verification. It extends known techniques of coalgebraic specification to a more general level to pave the way for real world applications of software verification. There are two main contributions of the present thesis: 1. Chapter 3 proposes a generalisation of the familiar notion of coalgebra such that classes containing methods with arbitrary types (including binary methods) can be modelled with these generalised coalgebras. 2. Chapter 4 presents the specification language CCSL (short for Coalgebraic Class Specification Language), its syntax, its semantics, and a prototype compiler that translates CCSL into higher-order logic.Die Dissertation beschreibt coalgebraische Mittel und Methoden zur Softwarespezifikation und -verifikation. Die Ergebnisse dieser Dissertation vereinfachen die Anwendung coalgebraischer Spezifikations- und Verifikationstechniken und erweitern deren Anwendbarkeit. Damit werden Softwareverifikation im Allgemeinen und im Besonderen coalgebraische Methoden zur Softwareverifikation der praktischen Anwendbarkeit ein Stück nähergebracht. Diese Dissertation enthält zwei wesentliche Beiträge: 1. Im Kapitel 3 wird eine Erweiterung des klassischen Begriffs der Coalgebra vorgestellt. Diese Erweiterung erlaubt die coalgebraische Modellierung von Klassenschnittstellen mit beliebigen Methodentypen (insbesondere mit binären Methoden). 2. Im Kapitel 4 wird die coalgebraische Spezifikationssprache CCSL (Coalgebraic Class Specification Language) vorgestellt. Die Bescheibung umfasst Syntax, Semantik und einen Prototypcompiler, der CCSL Spezifikationen in Logik höherer Ordnung (passend für die Theorembeweiser PVS und Isabelle/HOL) übersetzt

Permission-Based Separation Logic for Multithreaded Java Programs

This paper motivates and presents a program logic for reasoning about multithreaded Java-like programs with concurrency primitives such as dynamic thread creation, thread joining and reentrant object monitors. The logic is based on concurrent separation logic. It is the first detailed adaptation of concurrent separation logic to a multithreaded Java-like language. The program logic associates a unique static access permission with each heap location, ensuring exclusive write accesses and ruling out data races. Concurrent reads are supported through fractional permissions. Permissions can be transferred between threads upon thread starting, thread joining, initial monitor entrancies and final monitor exits.\ud This paper presents the basic principles to reason about thread creation and thread joining. It finishes with an outlook how this logic will evolve into a full-fledged verification technique for Java (and possibly other multithreaded languages)

SPEEDY: An Eclipse-based IDE for invariant inference

SPEEDY is an Eclipse-based IDE for exploring techniques that assist users in generating correct specifications, particularly including invariant inference algorithms and tools. It integrates with several back-end tools that propose invariants and will incorporate published algorithms for inferring object and loop invariants. Though the architecture is language-neutral, current SPEEDY targets C programs. Building and using SPEEDY has confirmed earlier experience demonstrating the importance of showing and editing specifications in the IDEs that developers customarily use, automating as much of the production and checking of specifications as possible, and showing counterexample information directly in the source code editing environment. As in previous work, automation of specification checking is provided by back-end SMT solvers. However, reducing the effort demanded of software developers using formal methods also requires a GUI design that guides users in writing, reviewing, and correcting specifications and automates specification inference.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2014, arXiv:1404.578