Abstract Dwyer et al. provide a language to specify dynamic properties based on a limited number of predefined patterns and scopes. The semantics of these properties is defined by translating each combination of a pattern and a scope into usual temporal logics (linear temporal logic, CTL, etc.). This translational semantics suffers from two main issues. It is not easily extensible to other patterns or scopes, and it is not always faithful to the natural semantics. In this article, we propose a compositional automata-based approach defining the semantics of each pattern and each scope by an automaton, after which the semantics is composed. Hence, the semantics is compositional and the language is easily extensible. We compare the two semantics by model checking. In some cases, our semantics reveals a lack of homogeneity within Dwyer et al.’s semantics. Finally, we apply this approach in the context of property-based testing, in order to evaluate the quality of a test suite, by measuring the coverage of the property automaton. To allow the tester to adapt the coverage criteria to its goals, we propose transformation rules over the patterns automata that implement relevant unfolding strategies for loops, or predicates labeling the automata transitions. We illustrate these principles by means of an industrial case study.

Summary In recent years, important efforts have been made for offering a dedicated language for modelling and verifying security protocols. Outcome of the European project AVISPA, the high‐level security protocol language (HLPSL) aims at providing a means for verifying usual security properties (such as data secrecy) in message exchanges between agents. However, verifying the security protocol model does not guarantee that the actual implementation of the protocol will fulfil these properties. This article presents a model‐based testing approach, relying on the mutation of HLPSL models to generate abstract test cases. The proposed mutations aim at introducing leaks in the security protocols and represent real‐world implementation errors. The mutated models are then analysed by the automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications tool set, which produces, when the mutant protocol is declared unsafe, counterexample traces exploiting the security flaws and, thus, providing test cases. A dedicated framework is then used to concretize the abstract attack traces, bridging the gap between the formal model level and the implementation level. This model‐based testing technique has been experimented on a wide range of security protocols, in order to evaluate the mutation operators. This process has also been fully tool‐supported, from the mutation of the HLPSL model to the concretization of the abstract test cases into test scripts. It has been applied to a realistic case study of the Paypal payment protocol, which made it possible to discover a vulnerability in an implementation of an e‐commerce framework. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper, we present a model-based testing tool resulting from a research project, named TASCCC. This tool is a complete tool chain dedicated to property-based testing in UML/OCL, that integrates various technologies inside a dedicated Eclipse plug-in. The test properties are expressed in a dedicated language based on property patterns. These properties are then used for two purposes. First, they can be employed to evaluate the relevance of a test suite according to specific coverage criteria. Second, it is possible to generate test scenarios that will illustrate or exercise the property. These test scenarios are then unfolded and animated on the Smartesting's Certify It model animator, that is used to filter out infeasible sequences. This tool has been used in industrial partnership, aiming at providing an assistance for Common Criteria evaluations, especially by providing test generation reports used to show the link between the test cases and the Common Criteria artefacts.

This paper presents an integration of grammar-based testing in a framework for contract-based testing in PHP. It relies on the notion of \gtypes, that make it possible to assign domains to data, by means of contract assertions written inside the source code of a PHP application. Then a test generation tool uses the contracts to generate relevant test data for unit testing. Finally a runtime assertion checker validates the assertions inside the contracts (among others membership of data to \gtypes) to establish the conformance verdict. We introduce here the possibility to generate and validate complex textual data specified by a grammar written in a dedicated grammar description language. This approach is tool-supported and experimented on the validation of web applications.

SUMMARY This article presents a model‐based test generation technique, from user‐defined scenarios, for behavioral models expressed as B machines. Scenarios are expressed using a customized formalism, based on regular expressions, that makes it possible to describe sequences of operation calls possibly reaching specific states of the system. A symbolic animation engine, simulating the execution of a model using constraint logic programming, is then exploited to play the unfolded scenarios on the model and to instantiate the test cases, providing the expected results used to establish the conformance verdict. This approach is tool supported by a research prototype and has been successfully applied in an industrial context of a smart card applet. This tool is extended by a scenario generator, which automatically generates testing strategies for exercising user‐defined properties, written using specific patterns. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In the recent years, important efforts have been made for offering a dedicated language for modelling and verifying security protocols. Outcome of the European project AVISPA, the High-Level Security Protocol Language (HLPSL) aims at providing a means for verifying usual security properties (such as data secrecy) in message exchanges between agents. Nevertheless, verifying the security protocol model does not guarantee that the actual implementation of the protocol will fulfil these properties. We propose in this paper a testing technique that makes it possible to validate an implementation of a security protocol, based on a HLPSL model. We introduce a set of mutation operators for HLPSL models that aim at introducing leaks in the security protocols. The mutated models are then analysed by the AVISPA tool set that will produce counter-example traces leading to the leaks, thus providing the test cases. We report an experiment of our mutation technique on a wide range of security protocols and discuss the relevance of the proposed mutation operators.

This paper proposes to define and assess the notion of quality of B models aiming at providing an automated feedback on a model by performing systematic checks on its content. We define and classify classes of automatic verification steps that help the modeller in knowing whether his model is well-written or not. This technique is defined in the context of ``behavioral models'' that describe the behavior of a system using the generalized substitutions mechanism. From these models, verification conditions are automatically computed and discharged using a dedicated tool. This technique has been adapted to the B notation, especially on B abstract machines, and implemented within a tool interfaced with a constraint solver that is able to find counter-examples to unvalid verification conditions.

This paper briefly describes the second version of the Tobias combinatorial test generator. This version improves the architecture of the tool to include filtering and test selection mechanisms. These mechanisms, associated with an efficient implementation, allow to generate and filter test suites of up to 1 million test cases.