Automated Analysis and Verification Research Group - VeriFIT
VeriFIT is a group including researchers and students from FIT BUT interested in research on methods of automated analysis and verification of systems. The interests of the group include formal analysis and verification (static analysis, abstract interpretation, model checking), dynamic analysis (i.e., analysis at run-time), intelligent testing as well as methods of self-healing of systems. The group is involved in basic research in the described areas as well as in development and evaluation of prototype verification tools.
![[img]](http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/research/groups/verifit/Pictures/VeriFIT.jpg)
Older photos of the group: 2012, 2013.
Research interestsStatic analysis, dynamic analysis and testing of computer systems, software quality assurance, and related subjects from the areas of automata theory and logics, including:
- Static analysis and verification with formal roots in the area of infinite-state systems (programs with pointers and dynamic linked data structures, concurrent programs with unbounded concurrency, programs with unbounded integer variables, arrays, parameters, recursion, unbounded communication channels, etc.), building on applications of theory of automata, logics, and graphs.
- Testing and dynamic analysis of (esp. concurrent) software using a broad range of techniques (such as noise injection, extrapolation, data mining, machine learning), including possible self-healing or providing information for software quality assurance.
- Formal verification in the area of hardware design based on high-level hardware description languages.
- Research on efficient techniques of handling automata (e.g., simulation reduction of non-deterministic automata or efficient inclusion checking on non-deterministic automata), decision procedures for various logics, etc.
Awards- The paper about the ANaConDA analyzer won the best tool demo award at ISSTA'18.
- The approach proposed in collaboration with the ehw@FIT group and first presented in the paper Approximating Complex Arithmetic Circuits with Formal Error Guarantees: 32-bit Multipliers Accomplished (M. Ceska, J. Matyas, V. Mrazek, L. Sekanina, Z. Vasicek, and T. Vojnar) won a bronze medal in the 2018 Human-Competitive Awards: "Humies" competition.
- V. Malík and J. Matyáš won the JCMM Brno PhD talent scholarship starting from the 2017 year.
- J. Matyáš won the IT SPY competition for the best diploma thesis of the year with his thesis "Employing Approximate Equivalence for Design of Approximate Circuits" led by M. Češka jr and solved in collaboration between the VeriFIT and ehw@fit groups.
- The Predator (M. Kotoun, P. Peringer, V. Šoková, T. Vojnar) and Forester (L.
Holík, M. Hruška, O. Lengál, A. Rogalewicz, J. Šimáček, T. Vojnar)
tools took part in the International Software Verification Competition SV-COMP'18 where they won one silver medal, and Predator won the ReachSafety-Heap and MemSafety-Heap categories. Moreover, some members of the group (V. Malík, Š. Martiček, T. Vojnar) got involved into the competition within the team of the 2LS analyser that is being primarily developed by the DiffBlue company.
- The Predator (M. Kotoun, P. Peringer, V. Šoková, T. Vojnar) and Forester (L. Holík, M. Hruška, O. Lengál, A. Rogalewicz, J. Šimáček, T. Vojnar) tools took part in the International Software Verification Competition SV-COMP'17 where they won one gold medal.
- Ondřej Lengál won the 2015 Antonín Svoboda Award for the Best Dissertation Thesis awarded by the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Computer Science.
- The Predator (M. Kotoun, P. Peringer, V. Šoková, T. Vojnar) and Forester (L. Holík, M. Hruška, O. Lengál, A. Rogalewicz, J. Šimáček, T. Vojnar) tools took part in the International Software Verification Competition SV-COMP'16 where they won one gold medal.
- The Predator (P. Müller, P. Peringer, T. Vojnar) and Forester (L. Holík, M. Hruška, O. Lengál, A. Rogalewicz, J. Šimáček, T. Vojnar) tools took part in the International Software Verification Competition SV-COMP'15 where they won one gold and one silver medal.
- The SPEN (C. Enea, O. Lengál, M. Sighireanu a T. Vojnar) and SLIDE
(R. Iosif, A. Rogalewicz a T. Vojnar) tools won one gold and three silver medals at the 1st International Competition of Separation Logic Decision Procedures SL-COMP'14.
- The Predator tool has been awarded the prestigious Kurt Gödel medal at the FLoC Olympic Games 2014 for its successes in three consecutive years of the international competition in software verification SV-COMP.
- The Predator (K. Dudka, P. Peringer, T. Vojnar) and CPAlien (P. Müller, T. Vojnar) tools took part in the International Software Verification Competition SV-COMP'14 where they won one silver and one bronze medal.
- The paper The Tree Width of Separation Logic with Recursive Definitions (R. Iosif, A. Rogalewicz, J. Simacek) received the Best Paper award of CADE-24, 2013.
- The paper An Integrated Specification and Verification Technique for Highly Concurrent Data Structures (P.A. Abdulla, F. Haziza, L. Holík, B. Jonsson, A. Rezine) received the EASST Best Software Science Paper award of ETAPS'13.
- The Predator tool (K. Dudka, P. Müller, P. Peringer, T. Vojnar) won three categories of the SV-COMP'13 competition.
- The paper ANaConDA: A Framework for Analysing Multi-threaded C/C++ Programs on the Binary Level (J. Fiedor, T. Vojnar) received the Best Tool Paper award of RV'12.
- The Predator tool (K. Dudka, P. Müller, P. Peringer, T. Vojnar) won one of the categories of the SV-COMP'12 competition.
- The paper When Simulation Meets Antichains. On Checking Language Inclusion of NFAs. (P.A. Abdulla,
Y.-F. Chen,
L. Holik,
R. Mayr,
T. Vojnar) received the EATCS Best Theory Paper award of ETAPS'10.
- The paper Composed Bisimulation for Tree Automata (P.A. Abdulla,
A. Bouajjani,
L. Holik,
L. Kaati,
T. Vojnar) received the Best Paper award of CIAA'08.
SeminarTool supportMost of the results, published in our papers, include an experimental evaluation on a prototype implementation. Here are some of the tools that we have developed (the others may be provided if you sent us a request by email).
Verification of C programs manipulating dynamic linked data structures based on pointers:- Forester -- a tool for analysing programs with dynamic linked data structures using tree automata.
- Predator -- a tool for analysing programs with various kinds of dynamic linked lists using symbolic memory graphs.
- CPAlien -- a tool for analysing programs with dynamic linked data structures using symbolic memory graphs in the context of configurable program analysis.
- Code-listener -- an infrastructure for building static analyzers on top of GCC compiler.
- ARTMC -- a tree-automata based tool for verifying programs operating on complex dynamic data structures linked through pointers.
- Ranger -- a tool for resource-bounds analysis of heap-manipulating programs based on the Forester tool.
Decision procedure:- dWiNA -- a decision procedure for the WS1S logic based on non-deterministic automata as an alternative to the very well-known MONA tool, which is based on using deterministic automata.
- Gaston -- a decition procedure for the WS1S logic based on-the-fly state-space search (an extension of the dWiNA prototype)
- SPEN
-- a decision procedure for a fragment of separation logic with inductive predicates over lists using a combination of graph homomorphism checking, SAT solving, and checking membership in languages of tree automata.
- SLIDE
-- a decision procedure for a fragment of separation logic with complex inductive predicates based on a reduction to checking inclusion of tree automata languages.
Verification of (concurrent) Java and C/C++ programs:- SearchBestie -- a generic infrastructure for applications of search techniques in the field of program testing.
- ANaConDA -- an environment for dynamic analysis of concurrent C/C++ programs on the binary level
- DA-BMC -- a tool suite for dynamic analysis of concurrent Java programs, recording suspicious executions, and their subsequent reproduction and further examination in the JPF model checker (formerly RecRev).
- Java Race Detector and Healer -- a tool for a run-time detection and automatic healing of race conditions in concurrent Java programs.
- MUSE -- a tool for model checking using symbolic execution.
A collection of benchmarks that we use in our experiments with testing and dynamic analysis of concurrent software is available HERE.
Tools for handling non-deterministic word and tree automata:-
libVATA
-- a library for efficient handling of explicitly as well as semi-symbolically encoded non-deterministic tree automata (an older version of the semi-symbolic part of the library used to be available as libSFTA).
- SA -- a tool for computing simulations over labelled transition systems (LTS) and tree automata (TA).
Verification of hardware:- Hades -- a tool for detecting various kinds of hazards in single pipelined microprocessors using a combination of various formal methods (dataflow analysis, SAT solving, parameterized model checking).
- CDCreloaded -- a tool for formal verification of asynchronous circuits wit multiple clock domains.
- VHDL2CA -- a tool for compiling parametric VHDL components into counter automata that may be subsequently used for a formal verification of the components for all possible values of the parameters (using existing tools for formal verification over counter automata).
Verification of real-time systems:- Zetav & Verif -- tools for verification of systems specified in RT-Logic language or the Modechart formalism.
CooperationOur group cooperates with many other teams within the Czech republic as well as abroad. For example, we currently cooperate quite actively with:
- Consortium of the European H2020 ECSEL project Aquas -- Aggregated Quality Assurance for Systems
- Red Hat Lab, a joint laboratory of Red Hat Czech and FIT BUT
- Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University
- LIAFA, Université Paris 7 -- Denis Diderot/CNRS
- VERIMAG, Université Joseph Fourier/INPG/CNRS, Grenoble -- the program verification group
- IIS, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
- Concurrency Theory Group, DCS, Univesity of Keiserslautern, Germany
- LFCS, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
- LTA, DISCo, University Milano Bicocc, Italy
- IBM Haifa Research Laboratories
- D3S, MFF UK, Prague, Czech Republic
- Faculty of informatics, Masaryk University in Brno -- including, e.g., organization of the MEMICS workshop
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