8,882 research outputs found
Symbolic execution proofs for higher order store programs
Higher order store programs are programs which store, manipulate and invoke code at runtime. Important examples of higher order store programs include operating system kernels which dynamically load and unload kernel modules. Yet conventional Hoare logics, which provide no means of representing changes to code at runtime, are not applicable to such programs. Recently, however, new logics using nested Hoare triples have addressed this shortcoming. In this paper we describe, from top to bottom, a sound semi-automated verification system for higher order store programs. We give a programming language with higher order store features, define an assertion language with nested triples for specifying such programs, and provide reasoning rules for proving programs correct. We then present in full our algorithms for automatically constructing correctness proofs. In contrast to earlier work, the language also includes ordinary (fixed) procedures and mutable local variables, making it easy to model programs which perform dynamic loading and other higher order store operations. We give an operational semantics for programs and a step-indexed interpretation of assertions, and use these to show soundness of our reasoning rules, which include a deep frame rule which allows more modular proofs. Our automated reasoning algorithms include a scheme for separation logic based symbolic execution of programs, and automated provers for solving various kinds of entailment problems. The latter are presented in the form of sets of derived proof rules which are constrained enough to be read as a proof search algorithm
Featherweight VeriFast
VeriFast is a leading research prototype tool for the sound modular
verification of safety and correctness properties of single-threaded and
multithreaded C and Java programs. It has been used as a vehicle for
exploration and validation of novel program verification techniques and for
industrial case studies; it has served well at a number of program verification
competitions; and it has been used for teaching by multiple teachers
independent of the authors. However, until now, while VeriFast's operation has
been described informally in a number of publications, and specific
verification techniques have been formalized, a clear and precise exposition of
how VeriFast works has not yet appeared. In this article we present for the
first time a formal definition and soundness proof of a core subset of the
VeriFast program verification approach. The exposition aims to be both
accessible and rigorous: the text is based on lecture notes for a graduate
course on program verification, and it is backed by an executable
machine-readable definition and machine-checked soundness proof in Coq
Modular Verification of Interrupt-Driven Software
Interrupts have been widely used in safety-critical computer systems to
handle outside stimuli and interact with the hardware, but reasoning about
interrupt-driven software remains a difficult task. Although a number of static
verification techniques have been proposed for interrupt-driven software, they
often rely on constructing a monolithic verification model. Furthermore, they
do not precisely capture the complete execution semantics of interrupts such as
nested invocations of interrupt handlers. To overcome these limitations, we
propose an abstract interpretation framework for static verification of
interrupt-driven software that first analyzes each interrupt handler in
isolation as if it were a sequential program, and then propagates the result to
other interrupt handlers. This iterative process continues until results from
all interrupt handlers reach a fixed point. Since our method never constructs
the global model, it avoids the up-front blowup in model construction that
hampers existing, non-modular, verification techniques. We have evaluated our
method on 35 interrupt-driven applications with a total of 22,541 lines of
code. Our results show the method is able to quickly and more accurately
analyze the behavior of interrupts.Comment: preprint of the ASE 2017 pape
A Verified Information-Flow Architecture
SAFE is a clean-slate design for a highly secure computer system, with
pervasive mechanisms for tracking and limiting information flows. At the lowest
level, the SAFE hardware supports fine-grained programmable tags, with
efficient and flexible propagation and combination of tags as instructions are
executed. The operating system virtualizes these generic facilities to present
an information-flow abstract machine that allows user programs to label
sensitive data with rich confidentiality policies. We present a formal,
machine-checked model of the key hardware and software mechanisms used to
dynamically control information flow in SAFE and an end-to-end proof of
noninterference for this model.
We use a refinement proof methodology to propagate the noninterference
property of the abstract machine down to the concrete machine level. We use an
intermediate layer in the refinement chain that factors out the details of the
information-flow control policy and devise a code generator for compiling such
information-flow policies into low-level monitor code. Finally, we verify the
correctness of this generator using a dedicated Hoare logic that abstracts from
low-level machine instructions into a reusable set of verified structured code
generators
Relational Symbolic Execution
Symbolic execution is a classical program analysis technique used to show
that programs satisfy or violate given specifications. In this work we
generalize symbolic execution to support program analysis for relational
specifications in the form of relational properties - these are properties
about two runs of two programs on related inputs, or about two executions of a
single program on related inputs. Relational properties are useful to formalize
notions in security and privacy, and to reason about program optimizations. We
design a relational symbolic execution engine, named RelSym which supports
interactive refutation, as well as proving of relational properties for
programs written in a language with arrays and for-like loops
A formally verified compiler back-end
This article describes the development and formal verification (proof of
semantic preservation) of a compiler back-end from Cminor (a simple imperative
intermediate language) to PowerPC assembly code, using the Coq proof assistant
both for programming the compiler and for proving its correctness. Such a
verified compiler is useful in the context of formal methods applied to the
certification of critical software: the verification of the compiler guarantees
that the safety properties proved on the source code hold for the executable
compiled code as well
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