Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: Bootstrapping

[Andrey G. Grozin]

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, C Y wrote:
> Years ago Ken Thompson proposed a diabolical attack on a computer that
> could be made by putting a trap door in a compiler, which would
> automatically build it into all software and subsequent versions of
> itself, undetectibly.  (I think this is the article:
> http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/) That kind of thing makes people
> (especially open source folk, I think) suspect all binaries, and for
> good reason.
Yes. I dislike having any binaries in my system I have not compiled 
myself. Therefore, I use Gentoo (installed from stage 1, so I recompiled 
gcc too). Of course, this does not help against the Thompson's attack.

> Not in light of things like Ken Thompson's proposed attack.  Security
> people may be paranoid, but on the internet paranoia is a virtue.
As one of my colleges said,

For a sysadmin, the absense of paranoia is called professional 
incompetence.

Sorry for off-topic.

Andrey