Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

World's First Formally-Proven OS Kernel

Posted by Soulskill on from the wait-for-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Operating systems usually have bugs — the 'blue screen of death,' the Amiga Hand, and so forth are known by almost everyone. NICTA's team of researchers has managed to prove that a particular OS kernel is guaranteed to meet its specification. It is fully, formally verified, and as such it exceeds the Common Criteria's highest level of assurance. The researchers used an executable specification written in Haskell, C code that mapped to Haskell, and the Isabelle theorem prover to generate a machine-checked proof that the C code in the kernel matches the executable and the formal specification of the system." Does it run Linux? "We're pleased to say that it does. Presently, we have a para-virtualized version of Linux running on top of the (unverified) x86 port of seL4. There are plans to port Linux to the verified ARM version of seL4 as well." Further technical details are available from NICTA's website.

3 of 517 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yeah right by oji-sama · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's not a bug, it's a formally proved feature ^.^

    --
    It is what it is.
  2. Re:Give me six lines of code... by Telecommando · · Score: 5, Funny

    Every program contains at least one bug, and can be shortened by at least
    one instruction. By induction, every program can be reduced to a single
    instruction which doesn't work. /old, I know.

    --
    Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
  3. Re:Give me six lines of code... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    /*
      *
      *
      *
      *
      */