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Trust and Automation in Verification Tools

  • Conference paper
Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5311))

Abstract

On the one hand, we would like verification tools to feature powerful automation, but on the other hand, we also want to be able to trust the results with a high degree of confidence. The question of trust in verification tools has been debated for a long time. One popular way of achieving trust in verification tools is through proof generation. However, proof generation could hamstring both the functionality and the efficiency of the automation that can be built into these tools. We argue that trust need not be achieved at the expense of automation, and outline a lightweight approach where the results of untrusted verifiers are checked by a trusted offline checker. The trusted checker is a verified reference kernel that contains a satisfiability solver to support the robust and efficient checking of untrusted tools.

This research was supported NSF Grants and CCR-ITR-0325808, CNS-0823086, and CNS-0644783.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Laboratory, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA

    Natarajan Shankar

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  1. Natarajan Shankar
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Information & Communication, Division of Computer and Communication Engineering, Korea University, Anam-Dong, Seongbuk-Gu, 136-701, Seoul, South Korea

    Sungdeok (Steve) Cha

  2. Departmnet of Computer Science and Engineering, Korea University, Anam-Dong, Seongbuk-Gu, 136-702, Seoul, South Korea

    Jin-Young Choi

  3. KAIST, Department of Computer Science, Guseong-Dong, Yuseong-Gu, 305-701, Daejon, South Korea

    Moonzoo Kim

  4. School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Computer and Information Science,, University of Pennsylvania, Levine Hall, Room 602, 3330 Walnut Street, PA 19104-6389, Philadelphia, USA

    Insup Lee

  5. Thomas M. Siebel Center , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 201 N. Goodwin Avenue, IL 61801-2302, Urbana, USA

    Mahesh Viswanathan

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Shankar, N. (2008). Trust and Automation in Verification Tools. In: Cha, S.(., Choi, JY., Kim, M., Lee, I., Viswanathan, M. (eds) Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis. ATVA 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5311. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88387-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88387-6_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-88386-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-88387-6

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