Verified Hardware/Software Co-Assurance: Enhancing Safety and Security for Critical Systems

Hardin, David S.

doi:10.1109/syscon47679.2020.9381831

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Much progress has been made to this end in recent years, to the point that developers can verify the correctness of common algorithm and data structure code that utilizes common idioms such as records, loops, modular integers, and the like, and verified compilers can guarantee that such code is compiled correctly to binary [18]. Particular progress has been made in the area of hardware/software co-design algorithms, where array-backed data structures are common [10,11]. (NB: This style of programming also addresses one of the shortcomings of Rust, namely its lack of support for cyclic data structures.…”

Section: The Rust Programming Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Verification of a Rust Implementation of Knuth's Dancing Links using ACL2

Hardin

2023

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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Dancing Links" connotes an optimization to a circular doubly-linked list data structure implementation which provides for fast list element removal and restoration. The Dancing Links optimization is used primarily in fast algorithms to find exact covers, and has been popularized by Knuth in Volume 4B of his seminal series The Art of Computer Programming. We describe an implementation of the Dancing Links optimization in the Rust programming language, as well as its formal verification using the ACL2 theorem prover. Rust has garnered significant endorsement in the past few years as a modern, memory-safe successor to C/C++ at companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and is being integrated into both the Linux and Windows operating system kernels. Our interest in Rust stems from its potential as a hardware/software co-assurance language, with application to critical systems. We have crafted a Rust subset, inspired by Russinoff's Restricted Algorithmic C (RAC), which we have imaginatively named Restricted Algorithmic Rust, or RAR. In previous work, we described our initial implementation of a RAR toolchain, wherein we simply transpile the RAR source into RAC. By so doing, we leverage a number of existing hardware/software co-assurance tools with a minimum investment of time and effort. In this paper, we describe the RAR Rust subset, describe our improved prototype RAR toolchain, and detail the design and verification of a circular doublylinked list data structure employing the Dancing Links optimization in RAR, with full proofs of functional correctness accomplished using the ACL2 theorem prover.

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Section: The Rust Programming Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Verification of a Rust Implementation of Knuth's Dancing Links using ACL2

Hardin

2023

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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“…Much progress has been made to this end in recent years, to the point that developers can verify the correctness of common algorithm and data structure code that utilizes common idioms such as records, loops, modular integers, and the like, and verified compilers can guarantee that such code is compiled correctly to binary [11]. Particular progress has been made in the area of hardware/software co-design algorithms, where array-backed data structures are common [6,7]. (NB: This style of programming also addresses one of the shortcomings of Rust, namely its lack of support for cyclic data structures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hardware/Software Co-Assurance using the Rust Programming Language and ACL2

Hardin¹

2022

Electron. Proc. Theor. Comput. Sci.

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The Rust programming language has garnered significant interest and use as a modern, type-safe, memory-safe, and potentially formally analyzable programming language. Our interest in Rust stems from its potential as a hardware/software co-assurance language, with application to critical systems such as autonomous vehicles. We report on the first known use of Rust as a High-Level Synthesis (HLS) language. Most incumbent HLS languages are a subset of C. A Rust-based HLS brings a single modern, type-safe, and memory-safe expression language for both hardware and software realizations with high assurance. As a study of the suitability of Rust as an HLS, we have crafted a Rust subset, inspired by Russinoff's Restricted Algorithmic C (RAC), which we have imaginatively named Restricted Algorithmic Rust, or RAR. In our first implementation of a RAR toolchain, we simply transpile the RAR source into RAC. By so doing, we leverage a number of existing hardware/software co-assurance tools with a minimum investment of time and effort. In this paper, we describe the RAR Rust subset, detail our prototype RAR toolchain, and describe the implementation and verification of several representative algorithms and data structures written in RAR, with proofs of correctness conducted using the ACL2 theorem prover.

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