A Hybrid Approach to Semi-automated Rust Verification

Published at PLDI 2025
DOI: 10.1145/3729289
Artifact: 10.5281/zenodo.15042441

Authors

• Sacha-Élie Ayoun
• Xavier Denis
• Petar Maksimović
• Philippa Gardner

Abstract

We propose a hybrid approach to end-to-end Rust verification where the proof effort is split into powerful automated verification of safe Rust and targeted semi-automated verification of unsafe Rust. To this end, we present Gillian-Rust, a proof-of-concept semi-automated verification tool built on top of the Gillian platform that can reason about type safety and functional correctness of unsafe code. Gillian-Rust automates a rich separation logic for real-world Rust, embedding the lifetime logic of RustBelt and the parametric prophecies of RustHornBelt, and is able to verify real-world Rust standard library code with only minor annotations and with verification times orders of magnitude faster than those of comparable tools. We link Gillian-Rust with Creusot, a state-of-the-art verifier for safe Rust, by providing a systematic encoding of unsafe code specifications that Creusot can use but cannot verify, demonstrating the feasibility of our hybrid approach.