Synthesizing Mutable Configurations: Setting up Systems for Success
Tim Nelson, Natasha Danas, Theophilos Giannakopoulos, Shriram Krishnamurthi
Workshop on Software Engineering for Infrastructure and Configuration Code, 2019
Abstract
Numerous devices, from network switches and servers to industrial control systems, can be unreliable if they are not configured properly. Even if a device’s implementation has been proven correct, it must still be configured to meet the specific functional and security requirements of its stakeholders.However, manual configuration remains labor intensive and error-prone even for experts. Automated configuration synthesis presents a promising way forward. Unfortunately, as we show, existing counterexample-guided algorithms can perform poorly if the system model allows configuration changes during execution. Yet disallowing such changes can hide significant problems, such as privilege escalation.
We present a new synthesis algorithm that exploits structure inherent in state-machine models where the system configuration changes. We implement it using the Kodkod relational model finder, and show that it favorably solves a number of configuration-synthesis tasks.
Paper
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