Using term rewriting to solve Bit-vector arithmetic problems (Poster Presentation)

Among many theories supported by SMT solvers, the theory of finite-precision bit-vector arithmetic is one of the most useful, for both hardware and software systems verification. This theory is also particularly useful for some specific domains such as cryptography, in which algorithms are naturally expressed in terms of bit-vectors. Cryptol is an example of a domain-specific language (DSL) and toolset for cryptography developed by Galois, Inc.; providing an SMT backend that relies on bit-vector decision procedures to certify the correctness of cryptographic specifications [3]. Most of these decision procedures use bit-blasting to reduce a bit-vector problem into pure propositional SAT. Unfortunately bit-blasting does not scale very well, especially in the presence of operators like multiplication or division.(undefined

Variability Bugs in Highly Configurable Systems: A Qualitative Analysis

Variability-sensitive verification pursues effective analysis of the exponentially many variants of a program family. Several variability-aware techniques have been proposed, but researchers still lack examples of concrete bugs induced by variability, occurring in real large-scale systems. A collection of real world bugs is needed to evaluate tool implementations of variability-sensitive analyses by testing them on real bugs. We present a qualitative study of 98 diverse variability bugs (i.e., bugs that occur in some variants and not in others) collected from bug-fixing commits in the Linux, Apache, BusyBox, and Marlin repositories. We analyze each of the bugs, and record the results in a database. For each bug, we create a self-contained simplified version and a simplified patch, in order to help researchers who are not experts on these subject studies to understand them, so that they can use these bugs for evaluation of their tools. In addition, we provide single-function versions of the bugs, which are useful for evaluating intra-procedural analyses. A web-based user interface for the database allows to conveniently browse and visualize the collection of bugs. Our study provides insights into the nature and occurrence of variability bugs in four highly-configurable systems implemented in C/C++, and shows in what ways variability hinders comprehension and the uncovering of software bugs.</jats:p

Towards a mostly-automated prover for bit-vector arithmetic

We present work in progress on the development of EasyBV, a specialized theorem prover for fixed-size bit-vector arith- metic.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Aberrant integration of Hepatitis B virus DNA promotes major restructuring of human hepatocellular carcinoma genome architecture.

Most cancers are characterized by the somatic acquisition of genomic rearrangements during tumour evolution that eventually drive the oncogenesis. Here, using multiplatform sequencing technologies, we identify and characterize a remarkable mutational mechanism in human hepatocellular carcinoma caused by Hepatitis B virus, by which DNA molecules from the virus are inserted into the tumour genome causing dramatic changes in its configuration, including non-homologous chromosomal fusions, dicentric chromosomes and megabase-size telomeric deletions. This aberrant mutational mechanism, present in at least 8% of all HCC tumours, can provide the driver rearrangements that a cancer clone requires to survive and grow, including loss of relevant tumour suppressor genes. Most of these events are clonal and occur early during liver cancer evolution. Real-time timing estimation reveals some HBV-mediated rearrangements occur as early as two decades before cancer diagnosis. Overall, these data underscore the importance of characterising liver cancer genomes for patterns of HBV integration