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Unless Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson placed a "trusting trust" attack in the original C compiler, since virtually all modern code was compiled by something tha
by nwah1 7y ago
Unless Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson placed a "trusting trust" attack in the original C compiler, since virtually all modern code was compiled by something that was once compiled by it.
(Ken Thompson coined the term and knows how to do it.)
- newnewpdro 7y agoThat's the whole point of these projects - they're preventing that type of attack. If you implement your bootstrap C compiler entirely in machine code for instance, it doesn't matter if the "original C compiler" is compromised, since it's not being compiled.
- pdw 7y agoTo counter that, they're working on a bootstrap chain that starts with a tiny 500 byte hex editor and ends with a compiler that can build the GNU toolchain.