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What are Ken Thompson attacks? I searched online but did not find anything informative. Can someone explain what these attacks are?
by chriszhang 6y ago
What are Ken Thompson attacks? I searched online but did not find anything informative. Can someone explain what these attacks are?
- Macha 6y agoSee "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
- boogies 6y agoWhich search engine? DuckDuckGo had a useful result right at the top https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Ken+Thompson+attacks https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Ken+Thompson+attacks > https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184874/is-ken-thompsons-compiler-hack-still-a-threat https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1848... (although the answer to the linked question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/194746/what-is-the-ken-thompson-hack?noredirect=1&lq=1 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1947... explained better to me).
- a1369209993 6y agoThey're actually called trusting trust attacks (the original paper on the topic is "Reflections on Trusting Trust" if you want a guarranteed search term); I'm not sure why userbinator used a eponym instead. I'm also not sure why they would be relevant for a general project, since the source language being easy to write a alternate compiler for only matters for the compiler itself: once you have non-infected compiler, you can bootstrap gcc or whatever and compile everything else at whatever C standard you like.
- userbinator 6y agoI'm not sure why userbinator used a eponym instead. It's the first thing that came to mind when I thought of the concept. Perhaps this discussion may yield some additional insight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24385389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24385389