Reflections on Trusting Trust
Ken Thompson
To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software.
- Profound, succinct summary of the self-perpetuating compiler attack.
- Paper takes a strange, sudden turn at the end to talk about the morality of malicious digital activity.
- The fact that the compiler has to learn and exists as an entity seperate from its own the source code is extremely interesting.
- The programming exercise was fun.