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33. Reflections on Trusting Trust is a lecture by Ken Thompson in which he explains the hack. Briefly: he hacked /bin/login to introduce a backdoor. he did this by hacking the compiler to introduce the backdoor into a binary whenever it detected that it was compiling the login source code. he also hacked the compiler to introduce the backdoor ...
Ken Thompson Hack (1984) Ken Thompson outlined a method for corrupting a compiler binary (and other compiled software, like a login script on a *nix system) in 1984. I was curious to know if modern compilation has addressed this security flaw or not. Short description: Re-write compiler code to contain 2 flaws:
Apr 9, 2017 · Closed 7 years ago. I understand Ken Thmpson hack involved like someone has mentioned on here. he hacked /bin/login to introduce a backdoor. he did this by hacking the compiler to introduce the backdoor into a binary whenever it detected that it was compiling the login source code. he also hacked the compiler to introduce the backdoor-producing ...
No. The source code is not usable since it cannot be executed, only machine code can be executed. And to transform it into a binary you need a compiler. But you have no assurance that the compiler you are using to make that binary does, in fact, make a faithful job of the transformation. To guard against the Thompson hack you have to bootstrap ...
Dec 12, 2015 · "At the start, Thompson did not even program on the PDP itself, but instead used a set of macros for the GEMAP assembler on a GE-635 machine."(29) A paper tape was generated on the GE 635 and then tested on the PDP-7 until, according to Ritchie, "a primitive Unix kernel, an editor, an assembler, a simple shell (command interpreter), and a few utilities (like the Unix rm, cat, cp commands) were completed.
Feb 27, 2013 · The second edition of Unix was developed for the PDP-11 at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others. It extended the First Edition with more system calls and more commands. This edition also saw the beginning of the C language, which was used to write some of the commands...
Feb 15, 2015 · So following @MichaelT's suggestion, I asked Ken Thompson: From: Ken Thompson < [email protected] > near on the keyboard: no. c copied from b so & and * are same there. b got * from earlier languages - some assembly, bcpl and i think pl/1. i think that i used & because the name (ampersand) sounds like "address." b was designed to be run with
May 16, 2011 · The first C compiler written by Dennis Ritchie used a recursive descent parser, incorporated specific knowledge about the PDP-11, and relied on an optional machine-specific optimizer to improve the assembly language code it generated. The first C compiler was also written by him, in assembly. This page from bell-labs answers most of your questions.
Sep 19, 2016 · [Update] I sent email to Ken Thompson, creator of B and one of the co-creators of C, inquiring about the rationale for choosing ^ as C's XOR operator, and asking permission to share the answer here. His reply (slightly reformatted for readability): From: Ken Thompson Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2016 4:50 AM To: Norbert Juffa
Dec 11, 2019 · Ken Thompson wrote that at first, he thought that he would absolutely hate this; after all, he was involved in the creation of several programming languages (B) and operating systems (Unix, Plan 9), and shaped the style of C, and he has very strong opinions.
