I guess the canonical example is using a compiler to compile its next version. Ken Thompson famously used this bootstrapping property to insert a trojan horse i

I guess the canonical example is using a compiler to compile its next version. Ken Thompson famously used this bootstrapping property to insert a trojan horse into the C compiler [1]. It propagated itself into future binary versions of the compiler, without actually appearing in their source code. [1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html