Felipe R. Monteiro

Felipe R. Monteiro, Mikhail R. Gadelha, Lucas C. Cordeiro

In the last three decades, memory safety issues in system programming languages such as C or C++ have been one of the significant sources of security vulnerabilities. However, there exist only a few attempts with limited success to cope with the complexity of C++ program verification. Here we describe and evaluate a novel verification approach based on bounded model checking (BMC) and satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) to verify C++ programs formally. Our verification approach analyzes bounded C++ programs by encoding into SMT various sophisticated features that the C++ programming language offers, such as templates, inheritance, polymorphism, exception handling, and the Standard C++ Libraries. We formalize these features within our formal verification framework using a decidable fragment of first-order logic and then show how state-of-the-art SMT solvers can efficiently handle that. We implemented our verification approach on top of ESBMC. We compare ESBMC to LLBMC and DIVINE, which are state-of-the-art verifiers to check C++ programs directly from the LLVM bitcode. Experimental results show that ESBMC can handle a wide range of C++ programs, presenting a higher number of correct verification results. At the same time, it reduces the verification time if compared to LLBMC and DIVINE tools. Additionally, ESBMC has been applied to a commercial C++ application in the telecommunication domain and successfully detected arithmetic overflow errors, potentially leading to security vulnerabilities.

Felipe R. Monteiro, Mikhail R. Gadelha, Lucas C. Cordeiro

Software model checking has experienced significant progress in the last two decades, however, one of its major bottlenecks for practical applications remains its scalability and adaptability. Here, we describe an approach to integrate software model checking techniques into the DevOps culture by exploiting practices such as continuous integration and regression tests. In particular, our proposed approach looks at the modifications to the software system since its last verification, and submits them to a continuous formal verification process, guided by a set of regression test cases. Our vision is to focus on the developer in order to integrate formal verification techniques into the developer workflow by using their main software development methodologies and tools.