Efficient Self-composition for Weakest Precondition Calculi

This paper contributes to deductive verification of language based secure information flow. A popular approach in this area is self-composition in combination with off-the-shelf software verification systems to check for secure information flow. This approach is appealing, because 1 it is highly precise and 2 existing sophisticated software verification systems can be harnessed. On the other hand, self-composition is commonly considered to be inefficient. We show how the efficiency of self-composition style reasoning can be increased. It is sufficient to consider programs only once, if the used verification technique is based on a weakest precondition calculus with an explicit heap model. Additionally, we show that in many cases the number of final symbolic states to be considered can be reduced considerably. Finally, we propose a comprehensive solution of the technical problem of applying software contracts within the self-composition approach. So far this problem had only been solved partially.

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