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Runtime Assertion Checking and Static Verification: Collaborative Partners

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Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Verification (ISoLA 2018)

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Abstract

Runtime assertion checking aspires to a similar level of sound and complete checking of software as does static deductive verification. Furthermore, for the same source language and specification language, runtime and static checking should implement as closely as possible the same semantics. We describe here the architecture used by two different systems to achieve this goal. We accompany that with descriptions of novel designs and implementations that add new capabilities to runtime assertion checking, bringing it closer to the feature coverage of static verification.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As has abstract-interpretation-based static analysis, but in this paper we focus on proof-based verification.

  2. 2.

    Here we are distinguishing runtime assertion checking from runtime verification [6], which typically deals with temporal properties, e.g. LTL properties.

  3. 3.

    Similarly, runtime checking of JML does not encode unbounded or even very large ranges of quantification, though the language subset supported by RAC in OpenJML is not as precisely defined as E-ACSL is for Frama-C.

  4. 4.

    This is not just a theoretical concern. The state-of-the-art in SMT technology is rapidly evolving, but still does not efficiently handle all the concepts natural to software. Proofs using bit-vector operations on 64-bit numbers and floating-point operations can routinely take tens of minutes if they complete at all; quantified expressions require heuristic algorithms to decide when to instantiate the expressions; recursion is not natural to ground solvers such as SMT tools; dynamic allocations and heterogeneous casts between integers and pointers (in C) require low-level memory models that make proof intractable.

  5. 5.

    https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/Boulder.pdf.

  6. 6.

    https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/JAVAhurt.pdf, p. 4.

  7. 7.

    For example at NASA, some containment algorithms are verified at runtime [38].

  8. 8.

    This theoretical limitation says that there is no terminating algorithm that can decide, statically through DV or at runtime through RAC, the equality relation between any pair of numbers that can be computed by Turing machines.

  9. 9.

    See also sections “Software Using MPFR” and “Other Related Free Software” on MPFR’s webpage, https://www.mpfr.org/.

  10. 10.

    https://bitbucket.org/adelard/simple-concurrency.

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Acknowledgements

This work is done in the context of project VESSEDIA, which has received funding from the European Union’s 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No. 731453.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEA, LIST, Software Safety and Security Laboratory, PC 174, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Fonenantsoa Maurica, David R. Cok & Julien Signoles

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  1. Fonenantsoa Maurica
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  2. David R. Cok
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  3. Julien Signoles
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Correspondence to David R. Cok .

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  1. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Maurica, F., Cok, D.R., Signoles, J. (2018). Runtime Assertion Checking and Static Verification: Collaborative Partners. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Verification. ISoLA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11245. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03421-4_6

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