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conference paper

Automated Verification of Network Function Binaries

Pirelli, Solal  
•
Valentukonytė, Akvilė
•
Argyraki, Katerina  
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April 4, 2022
Proceedings of the 19th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI)
19th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI)

Formally verifying the correctness of software network functions (NFs) is necessary for network reliability, yet existing techniques require full source code and mandate the use of specific data structures. We describe an automated technique to verify NF binaries, making verification usable by network operators even on proprietary code. To solve the key challenge of bridging the abstraction levels of NF implementations and specifications without special-casing a set of data structures, we observe that data structures used by NFs can be modeled as maps, and introduce a universal type to specify both NFs and their data structures, the "ghost map". In addition, we observe that the interactions between an NF and its environment are sufficient to infer control flow and types, removing the requirement for source code. We implement our technique in Klint, a tool with which we verify, in minutes, that 7 NF binaries satisfy their specifications, without limiting developers' choices of data structures. The specifications are written in Python and use maps to model state. Klint can also verify an entire NF binary stack, all the way down to the NIC driver, using a minimal operating system. Operators can thus verify NF binaries, without source code or debug symbols, without requiring developers to use specific programming languages or data structures, and without trusting any software except Klint.

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Type
conference paper
Web of Science ID

WOS:000876762200034

Author(s)
Pirelli, Solal  
Valentukonytė, Akvilė
Argyraki, Katerina  
Candea, George  
Date Issued

2022-04-04

Publisher

USENIX Association

Published in
Proceedings of the 19th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI)
ISBN of the book

978-1-939133-27-4

Total of pages

17

Start page

585

End page

600

Subjects

Network Functions

•

Network Function Verification

•

Automated Verification

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
NAL  
Event nameEvent placeEvent date
19th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI)

Renton, WA, USA

April 4-6, 2022

Available on Infoscience
June 23, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/188739
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