Trustworthy Systems

Automatic verification of message-based device drivers

Authors

Sidney Amani, Peter Chubb, Alastair Donaldson, Alexander Legg, Leonid Ryzhyk and Yanjin Zhu

Imperial College London

NICTA

Abstract

We develop a practical solution to the problem of automatic verification of the interface between device drivers and the OS. Our solution relies on a combination of improved driver architecture and verification tools. It supports drivers written in C and can be implemented in any existing OS, which sets it apart from previous proposals for verification-friendly drivers. Our Linux-based evaluation shows that this methodology amplifies the power of existing verification tools in detecting driver bugs, making it possible to verify properties beyond the reach of traditional techniques.

BibTeX Entry

  @inproceedings{Amani_CDLRZ_12,
    address          = {Sydney, Australia},
    author           = {Amani, Sidney and Chubb, Peter and Donaldson, Alastair and Legg, Alexander and Ryzhyk, Leonid and
                        Zhu, Yanjin},
    booktitle        = {Systems Software Verification},
    keywords         = {device drivers, reliability, model checking},
    month            = nov,
    pages            = {1--14},
    paperurl         = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/nicta_full_text/6331.pdf},
    title            = {Automatic Verification of Message-Based Device Drivers},
    year             = {2012}
  }

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