DARPA launches V-SPELLS program

On July 28, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the Verified Security and Performance Enhancement of Large Legacy Software (V-SPELLS) program. Responses are due by 12:00 p.m. Eastern on September 9.

The goal of the V-SPELLS program is to create a developer-accessible capability for piece-by-piece enhancement of software components with new verified code that is both correct-by-construction and compatible-by-construction, i.e., safely composable with the rest of the system. V-SPELLS will create practical tools for developers to gain benefits of formal software verification in incremental software (re)engineering rather than only in clean-slate introduction. V-SPELLS tools will enable developers to deliver assured incremental modernization of legacy systems in a manner that leverages verification technologies and reduces rather than raises risk.

V-SPELLS aims to radically broaden adoption of software verification by enabling incremental introduction of superior technologies into systems that cannot be re-designed from scratch and replaced as a whole.

Full information is available here.

Source: SAM