[HN Gopher] Ken Thompson on the bug that exposed his compiler tr...
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       Ken Thompson on the bug that exposed his compiler trojan (2021)
        
       Author : throwawaylinux
       Score  : 96 points
       Date   : 2023-06-19 11:08 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tuhs.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tuhs.org)
        
       | mike_hock wrote:
       | Lesson learned: It can't show up in the symbol table.
        
       | clueless wrote:
       | previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33008519
        
       | codetrotter wrote:
       | That is so neat! I never did read the paper itself on trusting
       | trust or whatever it was called, so I always thought this was
       | mainly a theoretical kind of thing. Didn't know that the man
       | actually made a real-life proof-of-concept for that exploit!
        
       | bigdict wrote:
       | So to clarify, they recompiled the compromised compiler using the
       | compromised compiler and it kept growing in size with each
       | iteration?
       | 
       | (See Reflections on Trusting Trust if you are completely confused
       | what this is about.)
        
       | saagarjha wrote:
       | > the extra byte was my bug.
       | 
       | Well, the one that broke it at least. Attacks of this nature are
       | inherently brittle.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-19 23:00 UTC)