Structural abstraction of software verification conditions

Abstract

Precise software analysis and verification require tracking the exact path along which a statement is executed (path-sensitivity), the different contexts from which a function is called (context-sensitivity), and the bit-accurate operations performed. Previously, verification with such precision has been considered too inefficient to scale to large software. In this paper, we present a novel approach to solving such verification conditions, based on an automatic abstraction-checking-refinement framework that exploits natural abstraction boundaries present in software. Experimental results show that our approach easily scales to over 200,000 lines of real C/C++ code. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.