This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation, VMCAI 2002, held in Venice, Italy in January 2002. The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on security and protocols, timed systems and games, static analysis, optimization, types and verification, and temporal logics and systems.