Methodology for Assuring Trusted Software

The goal of this project is to develop a methodology and supporting tools for automating much of the difficult task of showing that the source code for a large software system correctly implements its critical requirements. A module level specification format and two tools, a module level flowtool and a code summary tool, will be developed. The approach supplements the software development tasks of design/code walkthroughs and testing when a higher level of assurance is required. It differs from formal methods in that it is less formal and relies on designer/analysts to help check the correspondence. In Phase I, the requirements will be developed for the specification format and tools, which will be implemented in Phase II. Once developed, the methodology and tools will provide a believable and cost-effective means for documenting the high level specification to code correspondence. They will also be useful for maintaining assurance documents and for reverse engineering large systems.