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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii John Chambers <jc at trillian.mit.edu> writes: > Then, of course, there's Ken Thompson's famous "Reflections on > Trusting Trust" paper, in which he explains how to install a backdoor > in a program in such a way that it doesn't appear anywhere in the > source, but is inserted in the binary by the compiler. Also, the > insertion code doesn't appear in the compiler source, but is in the > binary version of the compiler, even after you recompile it. I remember reading that paper back in college. I responded at the time that if you write your own bootstrap compiler to compile the "real" compiler's source, you'll then have a binary of the "real" compiler that doesn't contain the insertion code. Today I would add to the rebuttal an assertion that the premise assumes a bug-free instance of the insertion code, and one that can successfully anticipate any future enhancements and other modifications to the compiler source code. I'd even speculate that such an ability might require an AI of nearly human-level intelligence, and I doubt such a thing would be small enough to insert unnoticed into the newly compiled compiler binary. - -- John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9 PGP-Key-Fingerprint 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 iQCVAwUBPefRy1V9A5rVx7XZAQIDYAP/SxUlMc+/GHf7idFUMKo5wNPy1vrwhe8F MZN99FKXVUjYR+R5Io/BQb9WOEScBRjwgBa5dL/+fyN21vGBlYs/Yj+GF7fbRjpv fqHIyZxswLvxZ30peHkRvD874Qul6A59J0s+lPBymAFxT8lLC0oYkmXvmBqgXli0 XoLTpDWDXX8= =31wk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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