Formal Verification of a C Value Analysis Based on Abstract Interpretation

Abstract: Static analyzers based on abstract interpretation are complex pieces of software implementing delicate algorithms. Even if static analysis techniques are well understood, their implementation on real languages is still error-prone. This paper presents a formal verification using the Coq proof assistant: a formalization of a value analysis (based on abstract interpretation), and a soundness proof of the value analysis. The formalization relies on generic interfaces. The mechanized proof is facilitated by a translation validation of a Bourdoncle fixpoint iterator. The work has been integrated into the CompCert verified C-compiler. Our verified analysis directly operates over an intermediate language of the compiler having the same expressiveness as C. The automatic extraction of our value analysis into OCaml yields a program with competitive results, obtained from experiments on a number of benchmarks and comparisons with the Frama-C tool.