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.
[^] # Re: re
Posté par Olivier Guerrier . En réponse au journal Code malveillant ?. Évalué à 2.
"Reflections on Trusting Trust" par Ken Thompson
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/(...)