A Static Analyzer for Large Safety-Critical Software

We show that abstract interpretation-based static program analysis can be made efficient and precise enough to formally verify a class of properties for a family of large programs with few or no false alarms. This is achieved by refinement of a general purpose static analyzer and later adaptation to particular programs of the family by the end-user through parametrization. This is applied to the proof of soundness of data manipulation operations at the machine level for periodic synchronous safety critical embedded software. The main novelties are the design principle of static analyzers by refinement and adaptation through parametrization, the symbolic manipulation of expressions to improve the precision of abstract transfer functions, the octagon, ellipsoid, and decision tree abstract domains, all with sound handling of rounding errors in floating point computations, widening strategies (with thresholds, delayed) and the automatic determination of the parameters (parametrized packing)

Modular and Safe Event-Driven Programming

Asynchronous event-driven systems are ubiquitous across domains such as device drivers, distributed systems, and robotics. These systems are notoriously hard to get right as the programmer needs to reason about numerous control paths resulting from the complex interleaving of events (or messages) and failures. Unsurprisingly, it is easy to introduce subtle errors while attempting to fill in gaps between high-level system specifications and their concrete implementations.This dissertation proposes new methods for programming safe event-driven asynchronous systems.In the first part of the thesis, we present ModP, a modular programming framework for compositional programming and testing of event-driven asynchronous systems.The ModP module system supports a novel theory of compositional refinement for assume-guarantee reasoning of dynamic event-driven asynchronous systems. We build a complex distributed systems software stack using ModP.Our results demonstrate that compositional reasoning can help scale model-checking (both explicit and symbolic) to large distributed systems.ModP is transforming the way asynchronous software is built at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Microsoft uses ModP for implementing safe device drivers and other software in the Windows kernel.AWS uses ModP for compositional model checking of complex distributed systems. While ModP simplifies analysis of such systems, the state space of industrial-scale systems remains extremely large.In the second part of this thesis, we present scalable verification and systematic testing approaches to further mitigate this state-space explosion problem.First, we introduce the concept of a delaying explorer to perform prioritized exploration of the behaviors of an asynchronous reactive program. A delaying explorer stratifies the search space using a custom strategy (tailored towards finding bugs faster), and a delay operation that allows deviation from that strategy. We show that prioritized search with a delaying explorer performs significantly better than existing approaches for finding bugs in asynchronous programs.Next, we consider the challenge of verifying time-synchronized systems; these are almost-synchronous systems as they are neither completely asynchronous nor synchronous.We introduce approximate synchrony, a sound and tunable abstraction for verification of almost-synchronous systems. We show how approximate synchrony can be used for verification of both time-synchronization protocols and applications running on top of them.Moreover, we show how approximate synchrony also provides a useful strategy to guide state-space exploration during model-checking.Using approximate synchrony and implementing it as a delaying explorer, we were able to verify the correctness of the IEEE 1588 distributed time-synchronization protocol and, in the process, uncovered a bug in the protocol that was well appreciated by the standards committee.In the final part of this thesis, we consider the challenge of programming a special class of event-driven asynchronous systems -- safe autonomous robotics systems.Our approach towards achieving assured autonomy for robotics systems consists of two parts: (1) a high-level programming language for implementing and validating the reactive robotics software stack; and (2) an integrated runtime assurance system to ensure that the assumptions used during design-time validation of the high-level software hold at runtime.Combining high-level programming language and model-checking with runtime assurance helps us bridge the gap between design-time software validation that makes assumptions about the untrusted components (e.g., low-level controllers), and the physical world, and the actual execution of the software on a real robotic platform in the physical world. We implemented our approach as DRONA, a programming framework for building safe robotics systems.We used DRONA for building a distributed mobile robotics system and deployed it on real drone platforms. Our results demonstrate that DRONA (with the runtime-assurance capabilities) enables programmers to build an autonomous robotics software stack with formal safety guarantees.To summarize, this thesis contributes new theory and tools to the areas of programming languages, verification, systematic testing, and runtime assurance for programming safe asynchronous event-driven across the domains of fault-tolerant distributed systems and safe autonomous robotics systems

Formal Specification and Verification for Automated Production Systems

Complex industrial control software often drives safety- and mission-critical systems, like automated production plants or control units embedded into devices in automotive systems. Such controllers have in common that they are reactive systems, i.e., that they periodically read sensor stimuli and cyclically execute the same program to produce actuator signals. The correctness of software for automated production is rarely verified using formal techniques. Although, due to the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0), the impact and importance of software have become an important role in industrial automation. What is used instead in industrial practice today is testing and simulation, where individual test cases are used to validate an automated production system. Three reasons why formal methods are not popular are: (a) It is difficult to adequately formulate the desired temporal properties. (b) There is a lack of specification languages for reactive systems that are both sufficiently expressive and comprehensible for practitioners. (c) Due to the lack of an environment model the obtained results are imprecise. Nonetheless, formal methods for automated production systems are well studied academically---mainly on the verification of safety properties via model checking. In this doctoral thesis we present the concept of (1) generalized test tables (GTTs), a new specification language for functional properties, and their extension (2) relational test tables (RTTs) for relational properties. The concept includes the syntactical notion, designed for the intuition of engineers, and the semantics, which are based on game theory. We use RTTs for a novel confidential property on reactive systems, the provably forgetting of information. Moreover, for regression verification, an important relational property, we are able to achieve performance improvements by (3) creating a decomposing rule which splits large proofs into small sub-task. We implemented the verification procedures and evaluated them against realistic case studies, e.g., the Pick-and-Place-Unit from the Technical University of Munich. The presented contribution follows the idea of lowering the obstacle of verifying the dependability of reactive systems in general, and automated production systems in particular for the engineer either by introducing a new specification language (GTTs), by exploiting existing programs for the specification (RTTs, regression verification), or by improving the verification performance

Towards the Correctness of Software Behavior in UML: A Model Checking Approach Based on Slicing

Embedded systems are systems which have ongoing interactions with their environments, accepting requests and producing responses. Such systems are increasingly used in applications where failure is unacceptable: traffic control systems, avionics, automobiles, etc. Correct and highly dependable construction of such systems is particularly important and challenging. A very promising and increasingly attractive method for achieving this goal is using the approach of formal verification. A formal verification method consists of three major components: a model for describing the behavior of the system, a specification language to embody correctness requirements, and an analysis method to verify the behavior against the correctness requirements. This Ph.D. addresses the correctness of the behavioral design of embedded systems, using model checking as the verification technology. More precisely, we present an UML-based verification method that checks whether the conditions on the evolution of the embedded system are met by the model. Unfortunately, model checking is limited to medium size systems because of its high space requirements. To overcome this problem, this Ph.D. suggests the integration of the slicing (reduction) technique

Synthesis of asynchronous distributed systems from global specifications

The synthesis problem asks whether there exists an implementation for a given formal specification and derives such an implementation if it exists. This approach enables engineers to think on a more abstract level about what a system should achieve instead of how it should accomplish its goal. The synthesis problem is often represented by a game between system players and environment players. Petri games define the synthesis problem for asynchronous distributed systems with causal memory. So far, decidability results for Petri games are mainly obtained for local winning conditions, which is limiting as global properties like mutual exclusion cannot be expressed. In this thesis, we make two contributions. First, we present decidability and undecidability results for Petri games with global winning conditions. The global safety winning condition of bad markings defines markings that the players have to avoid. We prove that the existence of a winning strategy for the system players in Petri games with a bounded number of system players, at most one environment player, and bad markings is decidable. The global liveness winning condition of good markings defines markings that the players have to reach. We prove that the existence of a winning strategy for the system players in Petri games with at least two system players, at least three environment players, and good markings is undecidable. Second, we present semi-decision procedures to find winning strategies for the system players in Petri games with global winning conditions and without restrictions on the distribution of players. The distributed nature of Petri games is employed by proposing encodings with true concurrency. We implement the semi-decision procedures in a corresponding tool.Das Syntheseproblem stellt die Frage, ob eine Implementierung f ¨ur eine Spezifikation existiert, und generiert eine solche Implementierung, falls sie existiert. Diese Vorgehensweise erlaubt es Programmierenden sich mehr darauf zu konzentrieren, was ein System erreichen soll, und weniger darauf, wie die Spezifikation erf ¨ ullt werden soll. Das Syntheseproblem wird oft als Spiel zwischen einem System- und einem Umgebungsspieler dargestellt. Petri-Spiele definieren das Syntheseproblem f ¨ur asynchrone verteilte Systeme mit kausalem Speicher. Bisher wurden Resultate bez¨uglich der Entscheidbarkeit von Petri-Spiele meist f ¨ur lokale Gewinnbedingungen gefunden. In dieser Arbeit pr¨asentieren wir zuerst Resultate bez¨uglich der Entscheidbarkeit und Unentscheidbarkeit von Petri-Spielen mit globalen Gewinnbedingungen. Wir beweisen, dass die Existenz einer gewinnenden Strategie f ¨ur die Systemspieler in Petri- Spielen mit einer beschr¨ankten Anzahl an Systemspielern, h¨ochstens einem Umgebungsspieler und schlechten Markierungen entscheidbar ist. Wir beweisen ebenfalls, dass die Existenz einer gewinnenden Strategie f ¨ur die Systemspieler in Petri-Spielen mit mindestens zwei Systemspielern, mindestens drei Umgebungsspielern und guten Markierungen unentscheidbar ist. Danach pr¨asentieren wir Semi-Entscheidungsprozeduren, um gewinnende Strategien f ¨ur die Systemspieler in Petri-Spielen mit globalen Gewinnbedingungen und ohne Restriktionen f ¨ur die Verteilung von Spielern zu finden. Wir benutzen die verteilte Natur von Petri-Spielen, indem wir Enkodierungen einf ¨uhren, die Nebenl¨aufigkeit ausnutzen. Die Semi-Entscheidungsprozeduren sind in einem entsprechenden Tool implementiert

IST Austria Technical Report

Synchronous programs are easy to specify because the side effects of an operation are finished by the time the invocation of the operation returns to the caller. Asynchronous programs, on the other hand, are difficult to specify because there are side effects due to pending computation scheduled as a result of the invocation of an operation. They are also difficult to verify because of the large number of possible interleavings of concurrent asynchronous computation threads. We show that specifications and correctness proofs for asynchronous programs can be structured by introducing the fiction, for proof purposes, that intermediate, non-quiescent states of asynchronous operations can be ignored. Then, the task of specification becomes relatively simple and the task of verification can be naturally decomposed into smaller sub-tasks. The sub-tasks iteratively summarize, guided by the structure of an asynchronous program, the atomic effect of non-atomic operations and the synchronous effect of asynchronous operations. This structuring of specifications and proofs corresponds to the introduction of multiple layers of stepwise refinement for asynchronous programs. We present the first proof rule, called synchronization, to reduce asynchronous invocations on a lower layer to synchronous invocations on a higher layer. We implemented our proof method in CIVL and evaluated it on a collection of benchmark programs

Semantics and Verification of UML Activity Diagrams for Workflow Modelling

This thesis defines a formal semantics for UML activity diagrams that is suitable for workflow modelling. The semantics allows verification of functional requirements using model checking. Since a workflow specification prescribes how a workflow system behaves, the semantics is defined and motivated in terms of workflow systems. As workflow systems are reactive and coordinate activities, the defined semantics reflects these aspects. In fact, two formal semantics are defined, which are completely different. Both semantics are defined directly in terms of activity diagrams and not by a mapping of activity diagrams to some existing formal notation. The requirements-level semantics, based on the Statemate semantics of statecharts, assumes that workflow systems are infinitely fast w.r.t. their environment and react immediately to input events (this assumption is called the perfect synchrony hypothesis). The implementation-level semantics, based on the UML semantics of statecharts, does not make this assumption. Due to the perfect synchrony hypothesis, the requirements-level semantics is unrealistic, but easy to use for verification. On the other hand, the implementation-level semantics is realistic, but difficult to use for verification. A class of activity diagrams and a class of functional requirements is identified for which the outcome of the verification does not depend upon the particular semantics being used, i.e., both semantics give the same result. For such activity diagrams and such functional requirements, the requirements-level semantics is as realistic as the implementation-level semantics, even though the requirements-level semantics makes the perfect synchrony hypothesis. The requirements-level semantics has been implemented in a verification tool. The tool interfaces with a model checker by translating an activity diagram into an input for a model checker according to the requirements-level semantics. The model checker checks the desired functional requirement against the input model. If the model checker returns a counterexample, the tool translates this counterexample back into the activity diagram by highlighting a path corresponding to the counterexample. The tool supports verification of workflow models that have event-driven behaviour, data, real time, and loops. Only model checkers supporting strong fairness model checking turn out to be useful. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by using the tool to verify some real-life workflow models