It was basically a comment on the submission title -- Ken Thompson's famous attack has a counter that's been known about for a while. For the submission itself

It was basically a comment on the submission title -- Ken Thompson's famous attack has a counter that's been known about for a while. For the submission itself it's not as related as other commenters note they don't provide a way for the exploit to propagate like KT's attack. I'll have to read the full paper later but I wonder if it references https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/leet08/tech/full_papers/king/king_html/ https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/leet08/tech/full_papers/...