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Certification of compiled assembly code by invariant translation

  • Special section on verification, model checking, and abstract interpretation
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Abstract

We present a method for analyzing assembly programs obtained by compilation and checking safety properties on compiled programs. It proceeds by analyzing the source program, translating the invariant obtained at the source level, and then checking the soundness of the translated invariant with respect to the assembly program. This process is especially adapted to the certification of assembly or other machine-level kinds of programs. Furthermore, the success of invariant checking enhances the level of confidence in the results of both the compilation and the static analysis. From a practical point of view, our method is generic in the choice of an abstract domain for representing sets of stores, and the process does not interact with the compilation itself. Hence a certification tool can be interfaced with an existing analyzer and designed so as to work with a class of compilers that do not need to be modified. Finally, a prototype was implemented to validate the approach.

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  1. École Normale Supérieure, 45, rue d’Ulm, 75 230, Paris, France

    Xavier Rival

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Rival, X. Certification of compiled assembly code by invariant translation. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 6, 15–37 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-003-0125-6

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