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Re: Compromising Debian Repositories



On Sat, Aug 03, 2013 at 12:17:06PM +0200, Volker Birk wrote:
> Not to mention the build tool chains.

It reminds me of Ken Thompson's article Reflections on Trusting Trust.
In which he explains how to train the C compiler.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

  "The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally
  create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people
  like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will
  protect you from using untrusted code. In demonstrating the
  possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler. I
  could have picked on any program-handling program such as an
  assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of
  program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A
  well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect."

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