Verifying LTL Properties of Bytecode with Symbolic Execution

Verifying LTL Properties of Bytecode with Symbolic Execution

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Bytecode languages are at a very desirable degree of abstraction for performing formal analysis of programs, but at the same time pose new challenges when compared with traditional languages. This paper proposes a methodology for bytecode analysis which harmonizes two well-known formal verification techniques, model checking and symbolic execution. Model checking is a property-guided exploration of the system state space until the property is proved or disproved, producing in the latter case a counterexample execution trace. Symbolic execution emulates program execution by replacing concrete variable values with symbolic ones, so that the symbolic execution along a path represents the potentially infinite numeric executions that may occur along that path. We propose an approach where symbolic execution is used for building a possibly partial model of the program state space, and on-the-fly model checking is exploited for verifying temporal properties on it. The synergy of the two techniques yields considerable potential advantages: symbolic execution allows for modeling the state space of infinite-state software systems, limits the state explosion, and fosters modular verification; model checking provides fully automated verification of reachability properties of a program. To assess these potential advantages, we report our preliminary experience with the analysis of a safety-critical software system.

Bytecode languages are at a very desirable degree of abstraction for performing formal analysis of programs, but at the same time pose new challenges when compared with traditional languages. This paper proposes a methodology for bytecode analysis which harmonizes two well-known formal verification techniques, model checking and symbolic execution. Model checking is a property-guided exploration of the system state space until the property is proved or disproved, producing in the latter case a counterexample execution trace. Symbolic execution emulates program execution by replacing concrete variable values with symbolic ones, so that the symbolic execution along a path represents the potentially infinite numeric executions that may occur along that path. We propose an approach where symbolic execution is used for building a possibly partial model of the program state space, and on-the-fly model checking is exploited for verifying temporal properties on it. The synergy of the two techniques yields considerable potential advantages: symbolic execution allows for modeling the state space of infinite-state software systems, limits the state explosion, and fosters modular verification; model checking provides fully automated verification of reachability properties of a program. To assess these potential advantages, we report our preliminary experience with the analysis of a safety-critical software system.

Symbolic execution, code-based model checking of software.

Symbolic execution, code-based model checking of software.

BRAIONE, P.; DENARO, G.; PEZZE, M.; KŘENA, B.

2010

05.04.2008

Elsevier Science

Budapest

Bytecode 2008

1571-0661

ELECTRONIC NOTES IN THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE

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