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by kybernetikos 1090 days ago
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. – Donald Knuth

It's not just hypothetical either. There was a bug in a sorting algorithm a few years back that had been 'proved' correct. I think it was to do with numbers wrapping, and that hadn't been considered in the mathematical proof.

1 comments

WPA2 also had an exploit (KRACK) while the handshake algorithm itself was "proven to be secure". Formal verification is a powerful tool but it does not guarantee bug-free code: it merely guarantees that the particular bugs you checked for are not possible.