Some applicants, developers, and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software vendors have proposed reverse engineering as an approach for satisfying RTCA/DO-178B objectives for airborne software. RTCA/DO-178B, software C...
详细信息
Some applicants, developers, and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software vendors have proposed reverse engineering as an approach for satisfying RTCA/DO-178B objectives for airborne software. RTCA/DO-178B, software Considerations in Airborne systems and Equipment Certification, serves as the means of compliance for most airborne software in civil aircraft. DO-178B defines reverse engineering as "the method of extracting software design information from the source code" and provides guidance particular to reverse engineering, when it is used to upgrade a development baseline. For purposes of this paper, reverse engineering is an approach for creating software life cycle data that did not originally exist, cannot be found, is not adequate, or is not available to a developer in order to meet applicable DO-178B objectives. Reverse engineering is not just the generation of data-rather it is a process to assure that the data is correct, the software functionality is understood and well documented, and the software functions as intended and required by the system. Reverse engineering is not, as some software developers propose, just an effort to generate the software life cycle data without intent to build in quality and the resulting design assurance. This paper explores reverse engineering in airborne software projects, by explaining a definition for the certification domain, describing the motivation for its use, and documenting the certification concerns. Two actual cases of reverse engineering are also described to illustrate the certification concerns in real projects.
暂无评论