Invariant Analysis

Invariant Analysis

Purpose

Enumerate security claims made by a design, formalize them as invariants, check for hidden assumptions, assess verification feasibility, and propose a specification approach for proving or disproving the claims.

Scope Constraints

Reads system designs, security documentation, and existing formal specifications. Does not modify implementation code or execute verification tools. Does not access production systems for testing.

Inputs

• System design with stated or implied security claims
• Threat model defining attacker capabilities
• Architecture documentation describing components and interactions
• Existing tests or verification results
• Constraints on verification effort (time, tools, expertise)

Input Sanitization

No user-provided values are used in commands or file paths. All inputs are treated as read-only analysis targets.

Procedure

Step 1: Enumerate Security Claims

Extract all security claims from the design, whether explicit or implicit:

• Explicit claims: Stated in documentation ("the system ensures mutual exclusion")
• Implicit claims: Assumed but not stated ("processes always terminate")
• Derived claims: Inferred from the design ("if A holds and B holds, then C should hold")
• For each claim, identify who makes it, what components it depends on, and what could violate it

Step 2: Formalize as Invariants

For each security claim, produce a formal invariant:

• Express the claim as a precise predicate over system state
• Classify as safety invariant (must hold in every reachable state) or temporal property
• Identify the state variables the invariant references
• Determine if the invariant is inductive (preserved by every action) or requires auxiliary lemmas
• Note invariants that cannot be expressed as simple state predicates (information flow, probabilistic)

Step 3: Check for Hidden Assumptions

For each invariant, enumerate the assumptions required for it to hold:

• Environmental: "The network eventually delivers messages" — is this guaranteed?
• Implementation: "The RNG produces uniform random output" — has this been verified?
• Threat model: "The attacker cannot read kernel memory" — what if they can (Meltdown)?
• Timing: "Operations complete within T milliseconds" — is this a hard guarantee?
• Classify assumptions by verifiability: axiom (accepted), verifiable (can be checked), unverified (risk)

Step 4: Assess Verification Feasibility

For each invariant, evaluate whether formal verification is practical:

• State space: How many states does the system have? Is bounded model checking feasible?
• Decidability: Is the property decidable for the system class? (Finite state? Parameterized? Infinite?)
• Tool support: Do existing tools (TLC, Spin, CBMC, Dafny) support this verification?
• Abstraction: Can the system be abstracted to make verification tractable without losing the property?
• Effort: How much effort (person-days) would verification require?

Step 5: Propose Specification Approach

Recommend a verification strategy for the highest-priority invariants:

• Full formal verification: TLA+/TLC for protocol properties, Dafny/Coq for implementation
• Bounded model checking: TLC or CBMC for bounded instances
• Property-based testing: QuickCheck/Hypothesis as a lightweight alternative
• Runtime monitoring: Instrument invariants as runtime assertions for production
• For each approach, state what it guarantees and what it does not

Compaction resilience: If context was lost during a long session, re-read the Inputs section to reconstruct what system is being analyzed, then resume from the earliest incomplete step.

Output Format

Security Claims Inventory

Hidden Assumption Analysis

Verification Feasibility Matrix

Recommended Verification Strategy

1. [Highest priority invariant]: [Approach] — [Justification]
2. [Next priority]: [Approach] — [Justification]
3. ...

Handoff

• Hand off to formal-spec if high-priority invariants should be formally specified in TLA+.
• Hand off to the requesting department for implementation of the recommended verification approach.

Quality Checks

• All explicit and implicit security claims enumerated
• Each claim formalized as a precise predicate
• Hidden assumptions identified and classified by verifiability
• Verification feasibility assessed with state space estimates
• Tool recommendations match the invariant class (safety/liveness/information flow)
• Verification effort estimated realistically
• Approach recommendations include both guarantees and limitations

Evolution Notes