Sufficient preconditions for modular assertion checking

Abstract

Assertion checking is the restriction of program verification to validity of program assertions. It encompasses safety checking, which is program verification of safety properties, like memory safety or absence of overflows. In this paper, we consider assertion checking of program parts instead of whole programs, which we call modular assertion checking. Classically, modular assertion checking is possible only if the context in which a program part is executed is known. By default, the worst-case context must be assumed, which may impair the verification task. It usually takes user effort to detail enough the execution context for the verification task to succeed, by providing strong enough preconditions. We propose a method to automatically infer sufficient preconditions in the context of modular assertion checking of imperative pointer programs. It combines abstract interpretation, weakest precondition calculus and quantifier elimination. We instantiate this method to prove memory safety for C and Java programs, under some memory separation conditions. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.