Verifying Safety of Parameterized Heard-Of Algorithms

Abstract

We consider the problem of automatically checking safety properties of fault-tolerant distributed algorithms. We express the considered class of distributed algorithms in terms of the Heard-Of Model where arbitrary many processes proceed in infinite rounds in the presence of failures such as message losses or message corruptions. We propose, for the considered class, a sound but (in general) incomplete procedure that is guaranteed to terminate even in the presence of unbounded numbers of processes. In addition, we report on preliminary experiments for which either correctness is proved by our approach or a concrete trace violating the considered safety property is automatically found.

Survey on Parameterized Verification with Threshold Automata and the Byzantine Model Checker

“…Based on this characterization, the authors proved cut-off theorems specialized to the properties of consensus: agreement, validity, and termination. More recently, [GREP20] proposed an approach for parameterized verification of safety properties of round-based algorithms, that can be expressed in the heard-of model, by combining overapproximation and backward reachability analysis.…”