LTL Model Checking for Register Pushdown Systems

Abstract

A pushdown system (PDS) is known as an abstract model of recursive programs. For PDS, model checking methods have been studied and applied to various software verification such as interprocedural data flow analysis and malware detection. However, PDS cannot manipulate data values from an infinite domain. A register PDS (RPDS) is an extension of PDS by adding registers to deal with data values in a restricted way. This paper proposes algorithms for LTL model checking problems for RPDS with simple and regular valuations, which are labelings of atomic propositions to configurations with reasonable restriction. First, we introduce RPDS and related models, and then define the LTL model checking problems for RPDS. Second, we give algorithms for solving these problems and also show that the problems are EXPTIME-complete. As practical examples, we show solutions of a malware detection and an XML schema checking in the proposed framework.