Ivy: Safety verification by interactive generalization

Oded Padon, Kenneth L. McMillan, Aurojit Panda, Mooly Sagiv, Sharon Shoham

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

142 Scopus citations

Abstract

Despite several decades of research, the problem of formal verification of infinite-state systems has resisted effective automation. We describe a system - Ivy - for interactively verifying safety of infinite-state systems. Ivy's key principle is that whenever verification fails, Ivy graphically displays a concrete counterexample to induction. The user then interactively guides generalization from this counterexample. This process continues until an inductive invariant is found. Ivy searches for universally quantified invariants, and uses a restricted modeling language. This ensures that all verification conditions can be checked algorithmically. All user interactions are performed using graphical models, easing the user's task. We describe our initial experience with verifying several distributed protocols.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPLDI '16
Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation
EditorsChandra Krintz, Emery Berger
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages614-630
Number of pages17
ISBN (Electronic)9781450342612
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 Jun 2016
Event37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, PLDI 2016 - Santa Barbara, United States
Duration: 13 Jun 201617 Jun 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI)
Volume13-17-June-2016

Conference

Conference37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, PLDI 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Barbara
Period13/06/1617/06/16

Funding

FundersFunder number
Intel Corporation
Seventh Framework Programme
European Research Council321174
Israel Science Foundation652/11
Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre

    Keywords

    • Counterexamples to induction
    • Distributed systems
    • Invariant inference
    • Safety verification

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