arXiv subjects

Ramana Nagasamudram

Publications and source records attributed to Ramana Nagasamudram.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Alignment complete relational Hoare logics for some and all

In relational verification, judicious alignment of computational steps facilitates proof of relations between programs using simple relational assertions. Relational Hoare logics (RHL) provide compositional rules that embody various alignments of executions. Seemingly more flexible alignments can be expressed in terms of product automata based on program transition relations. A single degenerate alignment rule (sequential composition), atop a complete Hoare logic, comprises a RHL for $\forall\forall$ properties that is complete in the sense of Cook. The notion of alignment completeness was previously proposed as an additional measure, and some rules were shown to be alignment complete with respect to a few ad hoc forms of alignment automata. This paper proves alignment completeness with respect to a general class of $\forall\forall$ alignment automata, for a RHL comprised of standard rules together with a rule of semantics-preserving rewrites based on Kleene algebra with tests. A new logic for $\forall\exists$ properties is introduced and shown to be sound and alignment complete for a new general class of automata. The $\forall\forall$ and $\forall\exists$ automata are shown to be semantically complete. Thus both logics are complete in the sense of Cook. The paper includes discussion of why alignment is not the only important principle for relational reasoning and proposes entailment completeness as further means to evaluate RHLs.

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arXiv2025

Forall-Exists Relational Verification by Filtering to Forall-Forall

Relational verification encompasses research directions such as reasoning about data abstraction, reasoning about security and privacy, secure compilation, and functional specificaton of tensor programs, among others. Several relational Hoare logics exist, with accompanying tool support for compositional reasoning of $\forall\forall$ (2-safety) properties and, generally, k-safety properties of product programs. In contrast, few logics and tools exist for reasoning about $\forall\exists$ properties which are critical in the context of nondeterminism. This paper's primary contribution is a methodology for verifying a $\forall\exists$ judgment by way of a novel filter-adequacy transformation. This transformation adds assertions to a product program in such a way that the desired $\forall\exists$ property (of a pair of underlying unary programs) is implied by a $\forall\forall$ property of the transformed product. The paper develops a program logic for the basic $\forall\exists$ judgement extended with assertion failures; develops bicoms, a form of product programs that represents pairs of executions and that caters for direct translation of $\forall\forall$ properties to unary correctness; proves (using the logic) a soundness theorem that says successful $\forall\forall$ verification of a transformed bicom implies the $\forall\exists$ spec for its underlying unary commands; and implements a proof of principle prototype for auto-active relational verification which has been used to verify all examples in the paper. The methodology thereby enables a user to work with ordinary assertions and assumptions, and a standard assertion language, so that existing tools including auto-active verifiers can be used.

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arXiv2023

Making Relational Hoare Logic Alignment Complete

In relational verification, judicious alignment of computational steps facilitates proof of relations between programs using simple relational assertions. Relational Hoare logics (RHL) provide compositional rules that embody various alignments. Seemingly more flexible alignments can be expressed in terms of product automata based on program transition relations. A RHL can be complete, in the ordinary sense, using a single degenerate alignment rule. The notion of alignment completeness was previously proposed as a more satisfactory measure, based on alignment automata, and some rules were shown to be alignment complete with respect to a few ad hoc forms of alignment automata. Using a rule of semantics-preserving rewrites based on Kleene algebra with tests, an RHL is shown to be alignment complete with respect to a very general class of alignment automata. Besides solving the open problem of general alignment completeness, this result bridges between human-friendly syntax-based reasoning and automata representations that facilitate automated verification.

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arXiv2023

The WhyRel Prototype for Relational Verification

Verifying relations between programs arises as a task in various verification contexts such as optimizing transformations, relating new versions of programs with older versions (regression verification), and noninterference. However, relational verification for programs acting on dynamically allocated mutable state is not well supported by existing tools, which provide a high level of automation at the cost of restricting the programs considered. Auto-active tools, on the other hand, require more user interaction but enable verification of a broader class of programs. This article presents WhyRel, a tool for the auto-active verification of relational properties of pointer programs based on relational region logic. WhyRel is evaluated through verification case studies, relying on SMT solvers orchestrated by the Why3 platform on which it builds. Case studies include establishing representation independence of ADTs, showing noninterference, and challenge problems from recent literature.

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arXiv2023

An algebra of alignment for relational verification

Relational verification encompasses information flow security, regression verification, translation validation for compilers, and more. Effective alignment of the programs and computations to be related facilitates use of simpler relational invariants and relational procedure specs, which in turn enables automation and modular reasoning. Alignment has been explored in terms of trace pairs, deductive rules of relational Hoare logics (RHL), and several forms of product automata. This article shows how a simple extension of Kleene Algebra with Tests (KAT), called BiKAT, subsumes prior formulations, including alignment witnesses for forall-exists properties, which brings to light new RHL-style rules for such properties. Alignments can be discovered algorithmically or devised manually but, in either case, their adequacy with respect to the original programs must be proved; an explicit algebra enables constructive proof by equational reasoning. Furthermore our approach inherits algorithmic benefits from existing KAT-based techniques and tools, which are applicable to a range of semantic models.

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arXiv2022

A Relational Program Logic with Data Abstraction and Dynamic Framing

Dedicated to Tony Hoare. In a paper published in 1972 Hoare articulated the fundamental notions of hiding invariants and simulations. Hiding: invariants on encapsulated data representations need not be mentioned in specifications that comprise the API of a module. Simulation: correctness of a new data representation and implementation can be established by proving simulation between the old and new implementations using a coupling relation defined on the encapsulated state. These results were formalized semantically and for a simple model of state, though the paper claimed this could be extended to encompass dynamically allocated objects. In recent years, progress has been made towards formalizing the claim, for simulation, though mainly in semantic developments. In this article, hiding and simulation are combined with the idea in Hoare's 1969 paper: a logic of programs. For an object-based language with dynamic allocation, we introduce a relational Hoare logic with stateful frame conditions that formalizes encapsulation, hiding of invariants, and couplings that relate two implementations. Relations and other assertions are expressed in first-order logic. Specifications can express a wide range of relational properties such as conditional equivalence and noninterference with declassification. The proof rules facilitate relational reasoning by means of convenient alignments and are shown sound with respect to a conventional operational semantics. A derived proof rule for equivalence of linked programs directly embodies representation independence. Applicability to representative examples is demonstrated using an SMT-based implementation.

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arXiv2021

Alignment Completeness for Relational Hoare Logics

Relational Hoare logics (RHL) provide rules for reasoning about relations between programs. Several RHLs include a rule we call sequential product that infers a relational correctness judgment from judgments of ordinary Hoare logic (HL). Other rules embody sensible patterns of reasoning and have been found useful in practice, but sequential product is relatively complete on its own (with HL). As a more satisfactory way to evaluate RHLs, a notion of alignment completeness is introduced, in terms of the inductive assertion method and product automata. Alignment completeness results are given to account for several different sets of rules. The notion may serve to guide the design of RHLs and relational verifiers for richer programming languages and alignment patterns.

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