Symbolic Execution and Quantitative Reasoning
eBook - PDF

Symbolic Execution and Quantitative Reasoning

Applications to Software Safety and Security

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Symbolic Execution and Quantitative Reasoning

Applications to Software Safety and Security

About this book

This book reviews recent advances in symbolic execution and its probabilistic variant and discusses how they can be used to ensure the safety and security of software systems. Symbolic execution is a systematic program analysis technique which explores multiple program behaviors all at once by collecting and solving symbolic constraints collected from the branching conditions in the program. The obtained solutions can be used as test inputs that execute feasible program paths. Symbolic execution has found many applications in various domains, such as security, smartphone applications, operating systems, databases, and more recently deep neural networks, uncovering subtle errors and unknown vulnerabilities. We review here the technique has also been extended to reason about algorithmic complexity and resource consumption.

Furthermore, symbolic execution has been recently extended with probabilistic reasoning, allowing one to reason about quantitative properties of software systems. The approach computes the conditions to reach target program events of interest and uses model counting to quantify the fraction of the input domain satisfying these conditions thus computing the probability of event occurrence. This probabilistic information can be used for example to compute the reliability of an aircraft controller under different wind conditions (modeled probabilistically) or to quantify the leakage of sensitive data in a software system, using information theory metrics such as Shannon entropy.

This book is intended for students and software engineers who are interested in advanced techniques for testing and verifying software systems.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
No, books cannot be downloaded as external files, such as PDFs, for use outside of Perlego. However, you can download books within the Perlego app for offline reading on mobile or tablet. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
  • Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
  • Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Symbolic Execution and Quantitative Reasoning by Corina S. Păsăreanu in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Technology & Engineering & Computer Science General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. 1 Introduction
  7. 2 Symbolic Execution: The Basics
  8. 3 Symbolic Complexity Analysis
  9. 4 Probabilistic Reasoning
  10. 5 Side-Channel Analysis
  11. 6 Conclusion and Directions for the Future
  12. Bibliography
  13. Author’s Biography