Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling

[Ken at krvw.com (Kenneth R. van Wyk)]

On Wednesday 14 December 2005 16:40, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> I've written a paper on an approach to counter this attack. See:
>   "Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling"
>   http://www.acsa-admin.org/2005/abstracts/47.html

Thanks for sharing it here, David.

> Here's the abstract:
> "... Simply recompile the purported source code twice: once with a second
> (trusted) compiler, and again using the result of the first compilation.
> If the result is bit-for-bit identical with the untrusted
> binary, then the source code accurately represents the binary. ..."

This reminded me of an old class of PC viruses (circa 1992) that evaded 
detection by file scanners by hooking the S-DOS  file read interrupt and 
returning the original, uninfected version of infected files whenever a 
program opened up an infected file for reading.  It tricked a lot of file 
scanners at the time.  If I'm not mistaken, it was the DIR-II family of 
viruses.  I'm sure that you've taken that sort of evasive action into 
account, but I thought that I'd mention it here for the SC-L folks.

Heck, by today's rather loose definitions of what a rootkit is, perhaps the 
DIR-II family was the first malware to feature rootkit-like stealth 
techniques.

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk
-- 
KRvW Associates, LLC
http://www.KRvW.com