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Published in:
2007 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
A Reachability Predicate for Analyzing Low-Level Software
Authors : Shaunak Chatterjee, Shuvendu K. Lahiri, Shaz Qadeer, Zvonimir Rakamarić
Published in: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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Reasoning about heap-allocated data structures such as linked lists and arrays is challenging. The
reachability
predicate has proved to be useful for reasoning about the heap in type-safe languages where memory is manipulated by dereferencing object fields. Sound and precise analysis for such data structures becomes significantly more challenging in the presence of low-level pointer manipulation that is prevalent in systems software.
In this paper, we give a novel formalization of the reachability predicate in the presence of internal pointers and pointer arithmetic. We have designed an annotation language for C programs that makes use of the new predicate. This language enables us to specify properties of many interesting data structures present in the Windows kernel. We present preliminary experience with a prototype verifier on a set of illustrative C benchmarks.