The BLAST Software Verification System

Thomas A. Henzinger, Ranjit Jhala, Rupak Majumdar

Abstract: Blast is a verification system for checking safety properties of C programs. Blast implements a lazy-abstraction algorithm, which integrates automatic abstraction refinement and model checking [8]. The input to Blast is a C program and a safety monitor written in a specification language with C like syntax [1]. The lazy-abstraction algorithm returns either an error trace of the program together with a corresponding test case [2], or a proof that the program satisfies the safety property [6] (or, since the problem is undecidable, the algorithm may fail to terminate). Blast automatically constructs and refines a parsimonious predicate abstraction of the input program, using an interpolation-based decision procedure to find, based on counterexample analysis, the relevant predicates for each individual control location [5].