A short introduction to two approaches in formal verification of security protocols: model checking and theorem proving

Formal Software Verification: Model Checking and Theorem Proving

Approaches to Formal Verification of Security Protocols

— In recent times, many protocols have been proposed to provide security for various information and communication systems. Such protocols must be tested for their functional correctness before they are used in practice. Application of formal methods for verification of security protocols would enhance their reliability thereby, increasing the usability of systems that employ them. Thus, formal...

Combining Model Checking and Theorem Proving in Hardware Verification

In the age of submicron technology a single chip may contain tens or even hundreds of millions transistors. The task of making such enormous systems correct becomes a true challenge for the engineers. Pure simulation can only examine a tiny portion of the functionality of such devices, and can easily miss important errors. Formal verification has a potential of proving correctness of the design...

Experiments in Theorem Proving and Model Checking for Protocol Verification

Communication protocols pose interesting and diicult challenges for veriication technologies. The state spaces of interesting protocols are either innnite or too large for nite-state veriication techniques like model checking and state exploration. Theorem proving is also not eeective since the formal correctness proofs of these protocols can be long and complicated. We describe a series of pro...

Formal Verification of Complex Out-of-Order Pipelines by Combining Model-Checking and Theorem-Proving

We describe a methodology for the formal verification of complex out-of-order pipelines as they may be used as execution units in out-of-order processors. The pipelines may process multiple instructions simultaneously, may have branches and cycles in the pipeline structure, may have variable latency, and may reorder instructions internally. The methodology combines model-checking for the verifi...

Proof-Checking, Theorem-Proving, and Program Verification

This article consists of three parts: a tutorial introduction to a computer program that proves theorems by induction; a brief description of recent applications of that theorem-prover; and a discussion of several nontechnical aspects of the problem of building automatic theorem-provers. The theorem-prover described has proved theorems such as the uniqueness of prime factorizations, Fermat’s th...