Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Account
Menu
Find a journal Publish with us Track your research
Search
Cart
  1. Home
  2. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer
  3. Article

Challenges of software verification: the past, the present, the future

  • General
  • Special Section: Challenges of Software Verification
  • Open access
  • Published: 30 August 2024
  • Volume 26, pages 421–430, (2024)
  • Cite this article
Download PDF

You have full access to this open access article

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer Aims and scope Submit manuscript
Challenges of software verification: the past, the present, the future
Download PDF
  • Pietro Ferrara1,
  • Vincenzo Arceri2 &
  • Agostino Cortesi1 

  • 354 Accesses

  • Explore all metrics

Abstract

Software verification aims to prove that a program satisfies some given properties for all its possible executions. Software evolved incredibly fast during the last century, exposing several challenges to this scientific discipline. The goal of the “Challenges of Software Verification Symposium” is to monitor the state-of-the-art in this field. In this article, we will present the evolution of software from its inception in the 1940s to today’s applications, how this exposed new challenges to software verification, and what this discipline achieved. We will then discuss how this chapter covers most of the current open challenges, the possible future software developments, and what challenges this will raise in software verification.

Article PDF

Download to read the full article text

Similar content being viewed by others

Second Competition on Software Verification

Chapter © 2013

Status Report on Software Verification

Chapter © 2014

Software Model Checking: 20 Years and Beyond

Chapter © 2022
Use our pre-submission checklist

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

References

  1. Allen, F.E.: Control flow analysis. ACM SIGPLAN Not. 5(7), 1–19 (1970)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Andersen, L.O.: Program analysis and specialization for the C programming language. PhD thesis, Datalogisk Institut, Københavns Universitet (1994)

  3. Arceri, V., Cortesi, A., Ferrara, P., Olliaro, M. (eds.): Challenges of Software Verification 2022. Intelligent Systems Reference Library, vol. 238. Springer, Berlin (2023)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Arzt, S., Rasthofer, S., Fritz, C., Bodden, E., Bartel, A., Klein, J., Le Traon, Y., Octeau, D., McDaniel, P.: Flowdroid: precise context, flow, field, object-sensitive and lifecycle-aware taint analysis for Android apps. ACM SIGPLAN Not. 49(6), 259–269 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Barnett, M., Leino, K.R.M., Schulte, W.: The spec# programming system: an overview. In: International Workshop on Construction and Analysis of Safe, Secure, and Interoperable Smart Devices, pp. 49–69. Springer, Berlin (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bodei, C., De Vincenzi, M., Matteucci, I.: Formal analysis of an AUTOSAR-based basic software module. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. (2024, in press)

  7. Brodo, L., Bruni, R., Falaschi, M., Gori, R., Milazzo, P., Montagna, V., Pulieri, P.: Causal analysis of positive reaction systems. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. (2024, in press)

  8. Clarke, E.M., Emerson, E.A.: Design and synthesis of synchronization skeletons using branching time temporal logic. In: Workshop on Logic of Programs, pp. 52–71. Springer, Berlin (1981)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Clarke, E.M., Emerson, E.A., Sistla, A.P.: Automatic verification of finite-state concurrent systems using temporal logic specifications. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 8(2), 244–263 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Clause, J., Li, W., Orso, A.: Dytan: a generic dynamic taint analysis framework. In: Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, pp. 196–206 (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Cousot, P.: Principles of Abstract Interpretation. MIT Press, Cambridge (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Cousot, P., Cousot, R.: Abstract interpretation: a unified lattice model for static analysis of programs by construction or approximation of fixpoints. In: Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, pp. 238–252 (1977)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Cousot, P., Cousot, R.: Systematic design of program analysis frameworks. In: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, pp. 269–282 (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Cousot, P., Cousot, R., Feret, J., Mauborgne, L., Miné, A., Monniaux, D., Rival, X.: The astrée analyzer. In: Proceedings of the 14th European Symposium on Programming (ESOP 2005), pp. 21–30. Springer, Berlin (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Dijkstra, E.W.: Guarded commands, nondeterminacy and formal derivation of programs. Commun. ACM 18(8), 453–457 (1975)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Emerson, E.A., Clarke, E.M.: Characterizing correctness properties of parallel programs using fixpoints. In: Automata, Languages and Programming: Seventh Colloquium, Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands, July 14–18, 1980, Proceedings 7, pp. 169–181. Springer, Berlin (1980)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Filinski, A., Larsen, K.F., Jensen, T.: Axiomatising an information flow logic based on partial equivalence relations. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. (2024, in press)

  18. Floyd, R.W.: Assigning meanings to programs. In: Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society Symposia on Applied Mathematics, vol. 19, pp. 19–31. Springer, Berlin (1967)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Haber, S., Stornetta, W.S.: How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document. Springer, Berlin (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Henzinger, T.A., Jhala, R., Majumdar, R., Sutre, G.: Software verification with blast. In: Model Checking Software: 10th International SPIN Workshop, Portland, OR, USA, May 9–10, 2003. Proceedings 10, pp. 235–239. Springer, Berlin (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Hoare, C.A.R.: An axiomatic basis for computer programming. Commun. ACM 12(10), 576–580 (1969)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Hoare, T.: The verifying compiler: a grand challenge for computing research. J. ACM 50(1), 63–69 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Hoofnagle, C.J., Van Der Sloot, B., Borgesius, F.Z.: The European Union general data protection regulation: what it is and what it means. Information & Communications Technology Law 28(1), 65–98 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Horwitz, S., Reps, T., Binkley, D.: Interprocedural slicing using dependence graphs. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 12(1), 26–60 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Jensen, S.H., Møller, A., Thiemann, P.: Type analysis for javascript. In: Static Analysis: 16th International Symposium, SAS 2009. Los Angeles, CA, USA, August 9–11, 2009, Proceedings 16, pp. 238–255. Springer, Berlin (2009)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Jhala, R., Majumdar, R.: Software model checking. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 41(4), 1–54 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Kernighan, B.W., Ritchie, D.M.: The C Programming Language. Prentice Hall, New York (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Kildall, G.A.: A unified approach to global program optimization. In: Proceedings of the 1st Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, pp. 194–206 (1973)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Knoop, J., Steffen, B.: The interprocedural coincidence theorem. In: Compiler Construction: 4th International Conference, CC’92. Paderborn, FRG, October 5–7, 1992, Proceedings 4, pp. 125–140. Springer, Berlin (1992)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  30. Knoop, J., Rüthing, O., Steffen, B.: Lazy code motion. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1992 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pp. 224–234 (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Knoop, J., Rüthing, O., Steffen, B.: Optimal code motion: theory and practice. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 16(4), 1117–1155 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Knoop, J., Steffen, B., Vollmer, J.: Parallelism for free: efficient and optimal bitvector analyses for parallel programs. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 18(3), 268–299 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Leroy, X.: A formally verified compiler back-end. J. Autom. Reason. 43, 363–446 (2009)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  34. Livshits, B., Sridharan, M., Smaragdakis, Y., Lhoták, O., Amaral, J.N., Chang, B.Y.E., Guyer, S.Z., Khedker, U.P., Møller, A., Vardoulakis, D.: In defense of soundiness: a manifesto. Commun. ACM 58(2), 44–46 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. McCarthy, J.: A basis for a mathematical theory of computation. In: Braffort, P., Hirschberg, D. (eds.) Computer Programming and Formal Systems, Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, vol. 26, pp. 33–70. Elsevier, Amsterdam (1959). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0049-237X(09)70099-0

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  36. McCarthy, J.: Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, part I. Commun. ACM 3(4), 184–195 (1960)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Monniaux, D.: Pragmatics of formally verified yet efficient static analysis, in particular for formally verified compilers. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. (2024, in press)

  38. Olivieri, L., Spoto, F.: Software verification challenges in the blockchain ecosystem. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. (2024, in press)

  39. Queille, J.P., Sifakis, J.: Specification and verification of concurrent systems in CESAR. In: International Symposium on Programming, pp. 337–351. Springer, Berlin (1982)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  40. Richards, M., Ford, N.: Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach. O’Reilly Media (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Sabelfeld, A., Myers, A.C.: Language-based information-flow security. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 21(1), 5–19 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Sagiv, M., Reps, T., Horwitz, S.: Precise interprocedural dataflow analysis with applications to constant propagation. Theor. Comput. Sci. 167(1–2), 131–170 (1996)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  43. Sagiv, M., Reps, T., Wilhelm, R.: Parametric shape analysis via 3-valued logic. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 24(3), 217–298 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Seidl, H., Erhard, J., Tilscher, S., Schwarz, M.: Non-numerical weakly relational domains. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. (2024, in press)

  45. Steffen, B.: Data flow analysis as model checking. In: International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Software, pp. 346–364. Springer, Berlin (1991)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  46. Steffen, B.: Property-oriented expansion. In: Static Analysis: Third International Symposium, SAS’96, Aachen, Germany, September 24–26, 1996, Proceedings 3, pp. 22–41. Springer, Berlin (1996)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  47. Steffen, B., Claßen, A., Klein, M., Knoop, J., Margaria, T.: The fixpoint-analysis machine. In: CONCUR’95: Concurrency Theory: 6th International Conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA, August 21–24, 1995, Proceedings 6, pp. 72–87. Springer, Berlin (1995)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  48. Tip, F., Palsberg, J.: Scalable propagation-based call graph construction algorithms. In: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, pp. 281–293 (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  49. Tolmach, P., Li, Y., Lin, S.W., Liu, Y., Li, Z.: A survey of smart contract formal specification and verification. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54(7), 1–38 (2021)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Tripp, O., Pistoia, M., Fink, S.J., Sridharan, M., Weisman, O.: Taj: effective taint analysis of web applications. ACM SIGPLAN Not. 44(6), 87–97 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Turing, A.M.: Checking a large routine. In: Report of a Conference on High Speed Automatic Calculating Machines, pp. 67–69. Univ. Math. Lab, Cambridge (1949)

    Google Scholar 

  52. Turing, A.M., et al.: On computable numbers, with an application to the entscheidungsproblem. J. Math. 58(345–363), Article ID 5 (1936)

    Google Scholar 

  53. Vallée-Rai, R., Co, P., Gagnon, E., Hendren, L., Lam, P., Sundaresan, V.: Soot – a Java bytecode optimization framework. In: Proceedings of CASCON’99, p. 13. IBM Press, Raleigh (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  54. Van Emden, M.H., Kowalski, R.A.: The semantics of predicate logic as a programming language. J. ACM 23(4), 733–742 (1976)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  55. von Neumann, J.: First draft of a report on the EDVAC. IEEE Ann. Hist. Comput. 15(4), 27–75 (1993)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Sitography

  1. Antoine Mine: MOPSA - Modular Open Platform for Static Analysis. https://mopsa.lip6.fr/ (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  2. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: The Software and System Verification group. https://ssv.dais.unive.it (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  3. Gartner: Gartner Hype Cycle Shows AI Practices and Platform Engineering Will Reach Mainstream Adoption in Software Engineering in Two to Five Years. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-11-28-gartner-hype-cycle-shows-ai-practices-and-platform-engineering-will-reach-mainstream-adoption-in-software-engineering-in-two-to-five-yearsl (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  4. ISO: 26262-6 Road vehicles - Functional safety. https://www.iso.org/standard/68388.html (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  5. ISO: IEC 62304 Medical device software — Software life cycle processes. https://www.iso.org/standard/38421.html (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  6. Luca Negrini: LiSA - A Library for Static Analysis. https://lisa-analyzer.github.io/ (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  7. The Software and System Verification group at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: 1st Challenges of Software Verification Symposium (CSV 22). https://unive-ssv.github.io/events/2022/05/20/csv.html ((2022)). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  8. The Software and System Verification group at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: 2nd Challenges of Software Verification Symposium (CSV 23). https://unive-ssv.github.io/events/2023/05/25/csv.html ((2023)). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  9. WALA: T. J. Watson Libraries for Analysis. https://github.com/wala/WALA (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  10. Weavworks: Sock Shop : A Microservice Demo Application. https://github.com/microservices-demo (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  11. Wikipedia: C — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language) (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  12. Wikipedia: C++ — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  13. Wikipedia: C Sharp — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language) (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  14. Wikipedia: COBOL — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  15. Wikipedia: ENIAC — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  16. Wikipedia: Fortran — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  17. Wikipedia: GrammaTech — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrammaTech (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  18. Wikipedia: History of software — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_software (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  19. Wikipedia: Java — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language) (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  20. Wikipedia: JavaScript — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  21. Wikipedia: LISP — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISP (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  22. Wikipedia: PHP — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  23. Wikipedia: Polyspace — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyspace (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  24. Wikipedia: Smalltalk — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  25. Wikipedia: Smart Contract — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  26. Wikipedia: Solidity — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

  27. Wikipedia: The DAO — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO (2024). [Online; accessed 05-July-2024]

Download references

Acknowledgement

Work partially supported by SERICS (PE00000014 – CUP H73C2200089001) under the NRRP MUR program funded by the EU – NGEU, and by iNEST – Interconnected NordEst Innovation Ecosystem funded by PNRR (Mission 4.2, Investment 49 1.5) NextGeneration EU (ECS_00000043 – CUP H43C22000540006).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy

    Pietro Ferrara & Agostino Cortesi

  2. University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Vincenzo Arceri

Authors
  1. Pietro Ferrara
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vincenzo Arceri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Agostino Cortesi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pietro Ferrara.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ferrara, P., Arceri, V. & Cortesi, A. Challenges of software verification: the past, the present, the future. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 26, 421–430 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-024-00765-y

Download citation

  • Accepted: 21 August 2024

  • Published: 30 August 2024

  • Issue Date: August 2024

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-024-00765-y

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Keywords

  • Program verification
  • Formal methods
  • Static analysis
Use our pre-submission checklist

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Advertisement

Search

Navigation

  • Find a journal
  • Publish with us
  • Track your research

Discover content

  • Journals A-Z
  • Books A-Z

Publish with us

  • Journal finder
  • Publish your research
  • Open access publishing

Products and services

  • Our products
  • Librarians
  • Societies
  • Partners and advertisers

Our imprints

  • Springer
  • Nature Portfolio
  • BMC
  • Palgrave Macmillan
  • Apress
  • Your US state privacy rights
  • Accessibility statement
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Help and support
  • Cancel contracts here

Not affiliated

Springer Nature

© 2024 Springer Nature