Progressive Model Generation for Adaptive Resilient System Software

Complex software systems are typically developed by disparate engineering teams working concurrently. At the same time, software requirements are frequently dynamic, evolving even during active development cycles. Discrepancies between how software is defined and how it is implemented at the modular level can cascade into critical system errors when modules are integrated. More troubling is that integration of modules containing poorly specified or poorly tested code can imperceptibly weaken the system from a security perspective, enabling an attacker to exploit undefined program states to exert undue control over the underlying system. The objective of the proposed work is the creation of the Robust Software Modeling Tool (RSMT), which enables software design to be precisely defined incrementally from the ground up by developers and later verified against assumptions that are made top-down by management. This greatly reduces the risk of integrating third party modules into an existing software system. RSMT is an incremental modeling tool that will be implemented as an Eclipse plugin targeting the Java language. It could, however, be extended to apply to virtually any compiled language.