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That seems more like a fictionalization of "Reflections on Trusting Trust" than a true story.
by dalke 11y ago
That seems more like a fictionalization of "Reflections on Trusting Trust" than a true story.
- brudgers 11y agoLink to Reflections on Trusting Trust: https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp...
- cshimmin 11y agoOr for those who like explanations from secondary sources: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack
- auntienomen 11y agoOr, perhaps, the grad student antagonist got the idea from the essay.
- vidarh 11y agoEither that, or said student had read Reflections on Trusting Trust. It was published in 1984. The 3B2's and Tymnet were current around then, and the authors bio indicates he's been programming long enough for the timeline to fit too. It's not that unlikely that someone, somewhere read the paper and decided to have some fun at some point. The thing that makes me tend to agree with you is that he hasn't mentioned any "finally, years later, I found out where that guy got his idea" moment in it.
- skybrian 11y agoHe did sorta mention it, but not by name: "I suddenly realize it's in the compiler. It was the compiler. And every time you compile the original code and run it puts in the subliminal message code into the source code. I'd heard of this before."
- vidarh 11y agoAh, yes, I missed that... Thanks.
- pdpi 11y agoThere is an "I'd heard of this before" in there that I do attribute to the paper.
- joelbugarini 11y agoMick (OP) responds to this assumption in the Quora comments: I just read that. This guy certainly wasn't Ken Thompson. But this happened to me in 1991, seven years after the date of publication you posted, and the "login" portion did the exact same thing Ken was describing as far as the secret password. This was probably Thompson's genius idea implemented by the grad student. The mechanism was very different though in the compiler, but the outcome was still a poisoned compiler. I had heard of self-modifying compiler before, too or I probably wouldn't have thought to look there myself. I'm not surprised to see Thompson behind the original idea.
- keithpeter 11y agoI thought of the 'trusting trust' paper just as I reached the paragraph about the compiler. As an ex-PHB rather than a programmer, I think perhaps that Dr Phelps could have had taken a bit more interest in the project &c. Perhaps had a look at the code now and again as simply asked "why does this look so unlike other people's code?". Might have sent a shot across the bows of the bad apple.
- Drdrdrq 11y agoThis. I wonder what made the graduate so angry to go to such extreme lengths to protect his code. And why nobody noticed it - did they even have the right to fix the code?
- anon4 11y agoI don't doubt the story's plausibility, but I'm left wondering how the student could have replaced the compiler with his own. Usually you need root in order to mess around with the system like that.
- jtheory 11y agoI assumed for the first half it was going to turn out to be a psych experiment (and there were several other compsci students getting similar "contracts") -- especially as the hurdles he was jumping were clearly intentionally set up.