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Invited Talk
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2026.1
Nitro Isolation Engine: Formally Verifying a Production Hypervisor (Invited Talk)

Authors: Hanno Becker, Nathan Chong, Robert Dockins, Jim Grundy, Jason Hu, Ike Mulder, Dominic P. Mulligan, Paul Mure, Bryan Parno, Lawrence C. Paulson, and Konrad Slind

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 382, 17th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2026)

Abstract
Cloud computing relies on hypervisors to enforce isolation between co-tenanted virtual machines. Hypervisors are therefore critical security infrastructure, and assurance of their correctness is paramount. Traditional engineering techniques - code review, testing, fuzzing - provide strong assurance but cannot exhaustively verify that isolation holds across all possible execution paths. Formal verification extends and complements these approaches by establishing mathematical guarantees about system behaviour. This talk presents our experience applying interactive theorem proving to verify a production hypervisor component: the Nitro Isolation Engine. This is a trusted, minimalist computing base written in Rust, enforcing isolation between virtual machines on AWS Graviton5 EC2 instances. Designed for verification from inception, we have specified the intended behaviour of this component and verified correctness in the Isabelle/HOL interactive theorem prover, producing approximately 330,000 lines of machine-checked models and proofs, and establishing three key classes of property: 1) Functional correctness: The system behaves as specified for all operations including virtual machine creation, memory mapping, and abort handling. Our total verification approach additionally establishes memory-safety, termination, and absence of runtime errors. 2) Confidentiality: A noninterference-style property demonstrates that guest virtual machine state remains hidden from an expansive definition of observer monitoring system actions, formalised as indistinguishability preservation up to permitted declassification flows. 3) Integrity: Guest virtual machine private state is unaffected by operations on distinct virtual machines. Currently, our proof coverage extends to verification of the core virtual machine-management hypercalls, guest power management, various utility hypercalls, and a subset of data, instruction, and asynchronous abort handling, and will continue to expand to cover more functionality including PCI device management and virtual GIC (Generic Interrupt Controller) handling. The talk will discuss the verification approach, key proof techniques, and challenges in applying formal methods to production systems. Note that this work builds on decades of academic research across interactive theorem proving, formal specification, separation logic and its automation, and programming language semantics.
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Hanno Becker, Nathan Chong, Robert Dockins, Jim Grundy, Jason Hu, Ike Mulder, Dominic P. Mulligan, Paul Mure, Bryan Parno, Lawrence C. Paulson, and Konrad Slind. Nitro Isolation Engine: Formally Verifying a Production Hypervisor (Invited Talk). In 17th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 382, pp. 1:1-1:2, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{becker_et_al:LIPIcs.ITP.2026.1,
  author =	{Becker, Hanno and Chong, Nathan and Dockins, Robert and Grundy, Jim and Hu, Jason and Mulder, Ike and Mulligan, Dominic P. and Mure, Paul and Parno, Bryan and Paulson, Lawrence C. and Slind, Konrad},
  title =	{{Nitro Isolation Engine: Formally Verifying a Production Hypervisor}},
  booktitle =	{17th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2026)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:2},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-436-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{382},
  editor =	{Komendantskaya, Ekaterina and Nipkow, Tobias},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2026.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-269757},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2026.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Isabelle/HOL, Rust, verification, separation logic, hypervisors}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SNAPL.2017.1
Everest: Towards a Verified, Drop-in Replacement of HTTPS

Authors: Karthikeyan Bhargavan, Barry Bond, Antoine Delignat-Lavaud, Cédric Fournet, Chris Hawblitzel, Catalin Hritcu, Samin Ishtiaq, Markulf Kohlweiss, Rustan Leino, Jay Lorch, Kenji Maillard, Jianyang Pan, Bryan Parno, Jonathan Protzenko, Tahina Ramananandro, Ashay Rane, Aseem Rastogi, Nikhil Swamy, Laure Thompson, Peng Wang, Santiago Zanella-Béguelin, and Jean-Karim Zinzindohoué

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 71, 2nd Summit on Advances in Programming Languages (SNAPL 2017)

Abstract
The HTTPS ecosystem is the foundation on which Internet security is built. At the heart of this ecosystem is the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which in turn uses the X.509 public-key infrastructure and numerous cryptographic constructions and algorithms. Unfortunately, this ecosystem is extremely brittle, with headline-grabbing attacks and emergency patches many times a year. We describe our ongoing efforts in Everest (The Everest VERified End-to-end Secure Transport) a project that aims to build and deploy a verified version of TLS and other components of HTTPS, replacing the current infrastructure with proven, secure software. Aiming both at full verification and usability, we conduct high-level code-based, game-playing proofs of security on cryptographic implementations that yield efficient, deployable code, at the level of C and assembly. Concretely, we use F*, a dependently typed language for programming, meta-programming, and proving at a high level, while relying on low-level DSLs embedded within F* for programming low-level components when necessary for performance and, sometimes, side-channel resistance. To compose the pieces, we compile all our code to source-like C and assembly, suitable for deployment and integration with existing code bases, as well as audit by independent security experts. Our main results so far include (1) the design of Low*, a subset of F* designed for C-like imperative programming but with high-level verification support, and KreMLin, a compiler that extracts Low* programs to C; (2) an implementation of the TLS-1.3 record layer in Low*, together with a proof of its concrete cryptographic security; (3) Vale, a new DSL for verified assembly language, and several optimized cryptographic primitives proven functionally correct and side-channel resistant. In an early deployment, all our verified software is integrated and deployed within libcurl, a widely used library of networking protocols.
Cite as

Karthikeyan Bhargavan, Barry Bond, Antoine Delignat-Lavaud, Cédric Fournet, Chris Hawblitzel, Catalin Hritcu, Samin Ishtiaq, Markulf Kohlweiss, Rustan Leino, Jay Lorch, Kenji Maillard, Jianyang Pan, Bryan Parno, Jonathan Protzenko, Tahina Ramananandro, Ashay Rane, Aseem Rastogi, Nikhil Swamy, Laure Thompson, Peng Wang, Santiago Zanella-Béguelin, and Jean-Karim Zinzindohoué. Everest: Towards a Verified, Drop-in Replacement of HTTPS. In 2nd Summit on Advances in Programming Languages (SNAPL 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 71, pp. 1:1-1:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{bhargavan_et_al:LIPIcs.SNAPL.2017.1,
  author =	{Bhargavan, Karthikeyan and Bond, Barry and Delignat-Lavaud, Antoine and Fournet, C\'{e}dric and Hawblitzel, Chris and Hritcu, Catalin and Ishtiaq, Samin and Kohlweiss, Markulf and Leino, Rustan and Lorch, Jay and Maillard, Kenji and Pan, Jianyang and Parno, Bryan and Protzenko, Jonathan and Ramananandro, Tahina and Rane, Ashay and Rastogi, Aseem and Swamy, Nikhil and Thompson, Laure and Wang, Peng and Zanella-B\'{e}guelin, Santiago and Zinzindohou\'{e}, Jean-Karim},
  title =	{{Everest: Towards a Verified, Drop-in Replacement of HTTPS}},
  booktitle =	{2nd Summit on Advances in Programming Languages (SNAPL 2017)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-032-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{71},
  editor =	{Lerner, Benjamin S. and Bod{\'\i}k, Rastislav and Krishnamurthi, Shriram},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SNAPL.2017.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-71196},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SNAPL.2017.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Security, Cryptography, Verification, TLS}
}
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