ESBMC-PLC+: A Unified IEC 61131-3 Formal Verification Framework as a PLCverif Successor
PLCverif is the most mature open-source platform for PLC formal verification, developed at CERN and in production use since 2019. Yet it has two fundamental limitations: no support for Ladder Diagram (LD) programs, the dominant PLC notation, and reliance on CBMC as its primary backend, which restricts verification to bounded proofs. The PLCverif authors themselves identified ESBMC as the appropriate backend improvement. Prior work established ESBMC-PLC (a textual LD frontend with k-induction) and ESBMC-GraphPLC (graphical PLCopen XML support); together, they cover LD with unbounded proofs but not Structured Text (ST), and graphical LD with timer/counter function blocks remains unverifiable. This paper presents ESBMC-PLC+, a unified framework that closes both gaps: (1) an ST/SCL frontend via the MATIEC IEC 61131-3 compiler, routing C-compiled ST to ESBMC with nondeterministic input modeling and YAML property injection; (2) function block state semantics for graphical LD, extending the DFS resolver to model TON/TOF/TP timers, CTU/CTD counters, and R_TRIG/F_TRIG edge triggers as persistent scan-cycle state variables in the GOTO IR. ESBMC-PLC+ is the first open-source PLC verification framework to support all three major IEC 61131-3 input formats via a single ESBMC backend, enabling k-induction-unbounded safety proofs. A feature comparison with PLCverif and experimental evaluation on 8 benchmark programs, including programs with up to 8 integer timers, shows that ESBMC-PLC+ matches PLCverif's input coverage while providing stronger guarantees. Against nuXmv's BDD backend, ESBMC-PLC+ is 400-2,000x faster on timer programs and completes proofs where nuXmv BDD times out at 120s.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
ESBMC-PLC: Formal Verification of IEC 61131-3 Ladder Diagram Programs Using SMT-Based Model Checking
PLCs execute safety-critical programs across industrial sectors. The dominant PLC notation, ladder diagram (LD) per IEC 61131-3, remains absent from formal verification: SMT-based model checkers cannot process LD's rung-…
A New Era in Software Security: Towards Self-Healing Software via Large Language Models and Formal Verification
This paper introduces an innovative approach that combines Large Language Models (LLMs) with Formal Verification strategies for automatic software vulnerability repair. Initially, we employ Bounded Model Checking (BMC) t…
C++ codeMathematical ProofsDetecting Ladder Logic Bombs in IEC 61131-3 PLC Programs using ESBMC-PLC+: A Formal Verification Approach with Trigger Synthesis
A Ladder Logic Bomb (LLB) is malicious control logic in a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) program that lies dormant until a trigger activates a payload to manipulate actuators, forge sensor readings, or deny operator…
ESBMC-GraphPLC: Formal Verification of Graphical PLCopen XML Ladder Diagram Programs Using SMT-Based Model Checking
PLCopen XML defines two encoding formats for IEC 61131-3 Ladder Diagram programs: a textual encoding using <rung> elements, and a graphical encoding that represents rung logic as a directed graph of localId/refLocalId co…
ConVer: Using Contracts and Loop Invariant Synthesis for Scalable Formal Software Verification
Formal verification of large C programs is impeded by state-space explosion: Bounded Model Checking (BMC) tools must encode the entire state space up to the predetermined bound by unrolling all nested constructs. We pres…