Survey of Formal Verification Methods for Smart Contracts on Blockchain

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Murray ◽  
David A. Anisi
Keyword(s):  
Formal Verification ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Verification Methods

scholarly journals Verification of HotStuff BFT Consensus Protocol With TLA+/TLC in an Industrial Setting

2021 ◽  
Vol 93 ◽  
pp. 01006
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kukharenko ◽  
Kirill Ziborov ◽  
Rafael Sadykov ◽  
Ruslan Rezin
Keyword(s):  
Formal Verification ◽  
Formal Specification ◽  
Fault Tolerant ◽  
Software Implementation ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Consensus Protocol ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Formal Specification And Verification ◽  
Specification And Verification

The extent of formal verification methods applied in industrial projects has always been limited. The proliferation of distributed ledger systems (DLS), also known as blockchain, is rapidly changing the situation. Since the main area of DLSs’ application is the automation of financial transactions, the properties of predictability and reliability are critical for implementing such systems. The actual behavior of the DLS is largely determined by the chosen consensus protocol, which properties require strict specification and formal verification. Formal specification and verification of the consensus protocol is necessary but not sufficient. It is also required to ensure that the software implementation of the DLS nodes complies with this protocol. Finally, the verified software implementation of the protocol must run on a fairly reliable operating system. The financial focus of DLS application has also led to the emergence of the so-called smart contracts, which are an important part of the applied implementations of specific business processes based on DLSs. Therefore, the verifiability of smart contracts is also a critical requirement for industrial DLSs. In this paper, we describe an ongoing industrial project between a large Russian airline and three universities – Innopolis University (IU), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU). The main expected project result is a DLS for more flexible refueling of aircrafts, verified at least at the four technological levels described above. After brief project overview, we focus on our experience with the formal specification and verification of HotStuff, a leader-based fault-tolerant protocol that ensures reaching distributed consensus in the presence of Byzantine processes. The formal specification of the protocol is performed in the TLA+ language and then verified with a specialized TLC tool to verify models based on TLA+ specifications.

scholarly journals A Formal Verification Framework for Security Issues of Blockchain Smart Contracts

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianyu Sun ◽  
Wensheng Yu
Keyword(s):  
Formal Verification ◽  
Program Verification ◽  
Formal Method ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Security Vulnerabilities ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Computing Platform ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Distributed Computing Platform

Blockchain technology has attracted more and more attention from academia and industry recently. Ethereum, which uses blockchain technology, is a distributed computing platform and operating system. Smart contracts are small programs deployed to the Ethereum blockchain for execution. Errors in smart contracts will lead to huge losses. Formal verification can provide a reliable guarantee for the security of blockchain smart contracts. In this paper, the formal method is applied to inspect the security issues of smart contracts. We summarize five kinds of security issues in smart contracts and present formal verification methods for these issues, thus establishing a formal verification framework that can effectively verify the security vulnerabilities of smart contracts. Furthermore, we present a complete formal verification of the Binance Coin (BNB) contract. It shows how to formally verify the above security issues based on the formal verification framework in a specific smart contract. All the proofs are checked formally using the Coq proof assistant in which contract model and specification are formalized. The formal work of this paper has a variety of essential applications, such as the verification of blockchain smart contracts, program verification, and the formal establishment of mathematical and computer theoretical foundations.

Formal Verification of Control System Software

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre-Loïc Garoche
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Formal Verification ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
System Software ◽  
Unified Approach ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Autonomous Cars ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
Verification Techniques

The verification of control system software is critical to a host of technologies and industries, from aeronautics and medical technology to the cars we drive. The failure of controller software can cost people their lives. This book provides control engineers and computer scientists with an introduction to the formal techniques for analyzing and verifying this important class of software. Too often, control engineers are unaware of the issues surrounding the verification of software, while computer scientists tend to be unfamiliar with the specificities of controller software. The book provides a unified approach that is geared to graduate students in both fields, covering formal verification methods as well as the design and verification of controllers. It presents a wealth of new verification techniques for performing exhaustive analysis of controller software. These include new means to compute nonlinear invariants, the use of convex optimization tools, and methods for dealing with numerical imprecisions such as floating point computations occurring in the analyzed software. As the autonomy of critical systems continues to increase—as evidenced by autonomous cars, drones, and satellites and landers—the numerical functions in these systems are growing ever more advanced. The techniques presented here are essential to support the formal analysis of the controller software being used in these new and emerging technologies.

scholarly journals Analysis of existing parallel programs verification technologies

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Formal Verification ◽  
Software Verification ◽  
Computer Systems ◽  
Synthetic Methods ◽  
System Model ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Verification Method ◽  
Testing And Debugging ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Industrial Software

The past few decades have seen large fluctuations in the perceived value of parallel computing. At times, parallel computation has optimistically been viewed as the solution to all of our computational limitations. The conventional division of verification methods is analyzed. It is concluded that synthetic methods of software verification can be considered as the most relevant, most useful and productive ones. It is noted that the implementation of the methods of formal verification of software of computer systems, which supplement the traditional methods of testing and debugging, and make it possible to improve the uptime and security of programs, is relevant. Methods of computer systems software formal verification can guarantee the check that verified properties are performed by system model. Nowadays, these methods are actively being developed in the direction of reducing the formal verification total cost, support of modern programming concepts and minimization of "manual" work in the transition from the system model to its implementation. Their main feature is an ability to search for errors using mathematical model, without recourse to existing realization of software. It is very convenient and economical. There are several specific techniques used for formal models analysis, such as deductive analysis, model and consistence check. Every verification method is been used in particular cases, depending on the goal. Synthetic methods of software verification are considered the most actual, useful and efficient, as they somehow try to combine the advantages of different verification approaches, getting rid of their drawbacks. Currently, there has been made significant progress in the development of such methods and their implementation in the practice of industrial software development.

An Open-Bisimilarity Based Automated Verification Tool for -Calculus Family of Process Calculi

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-83
Author(s):  
Shahram Rahimi ◽  
Rishath A. S. Rias ◽  
Elham S. Khorasani
Keyword(s):  
Expert System ◽  
Formal Verification ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Automated Verification ◽  
Efficient System ◽  
Verification Tool ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
System Verification ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right

The complexity of designing concurrent and highly-evolving interactive systems has grown to a point where system verification has become a hurdle. Fortunately, formal verification methods have arrived at the right time. They detect errors, inconsistencies and incompleteness at early development stages of a system formally modeled using a formal specification language. -calculus (Milner, 1999) is one such formal language which provides strong mathematical base that can be used for verifying system specifications. But manually verifying the specifications of concurrent systems is a very tedious and error-prone work, especially if the specifications are large. Consequently, an automated verification tool would be essential for efficient system design and development. In addition, formal verification tools are vital ingredient to fully harness the potential of component-based software composition. The authors developed such an automated verification tool which is highly portable and seamlessly integrates with the visualization, reduction and performance evaluation tools introduced (Ahmad & Rahimi, 2008; Rahimi, 2006; Rahimi et al., 2001, 2008) to provide a comprehensive tool for designing and analyzing multi process/agent systems. Open-Bisimulation (Sangiorgi, 1996) concept is utilized as the theoretical base for the design and implementation of the tool which incorporates an expert system implemented in Java Expert System Shell (JESS) (Friedman-Hill, 2003).

Formal Verification of Secrecy, Coercion Resistance and Verifiability Properties for a Remote Electronic Voting Protocol

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-85
Author(s):  
Khaoula Marzouki ◽  
Amira Radhouani ◽  
Narjes Ben Rajeb
Keyword(s):  
Formal Verification ◽  
Electronic Voting ◽  
Automated Verification ◽  
Verification Tool ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Pi Calculus ◽  
Security Properties

Electronic voting protocols have many advantages over traditional voting but they are complex and subject to many kinds of attacks. Therefore, the use of formal verification methods is crucial to ensure some security properties. We propose to model a recent protocol of remote electronic voting in the applied Pi-calculus. We focalized on some security properties such as fairness which expresses the impossibility of obtaining partial results, eligibility which requires that only legitimate voters can vote, coercion resistance which ensures that no voter may vote under pressure, and verifiability which supposes that anyone can verify the accuracy of the final result. We proved either manually or using the automated verification tool ProVerif that the protocol satisfies these security properties.

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