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Hovav Shacham (hovav@infosec.exchange)'s status on Friday, 27-Oct-2023 04:56:06 JST Hovav Shacham

The security hill I will die on: Credit for the “backdoored compiler” trick should go to Karger and Schell (“Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis,” 1974).¹ That’s the “Unknown Air Force Document” from which Thompson (1984) borrowed the idea.
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¹ https://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics-orig.pdf, §3.4.5
In conversation Friday, 27-Oct-2023 04:56:06 JST from infosec.exchange permalink
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1. Excerpt from section 3.4.5 of Karger and Schell's "Multics Security Evaluation: Vulnerability Analysis" (1974), in the retypeset version published in the classic papers track at ACSAC 2002. The excerpt describes how a backdoor in the PL/I compiler used to compile Multics could persist through a compiler recompile, i.e., the idea often credited to Thompson a decade later.
  https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/111/301/677/048/505/697/original/3363da4270a4c7f9.png
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