Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling

[ge at linuxbox.org (Gadi Evron)]

Wheeler, David A wrote:
> All -
>
> As you know, in the "trusting trust" attack, compilers can be subverted to insert malicious Trojan horses into 
> critical software... including themselves.  This turns out to be a nasty attack that's not easy to counter.
>
> I've just released my draft PhD dissertation, "Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling" 
> (DDC), that describes how to counter the "trusting trust" attack. More details, including the dissertation, are here:
>  http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust
>
> On November 23, 2009, 1-3pm, I will be giving a public defense of this dissertation.  If you're interested, please 
> come!  It will be at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, Innovation Hall, room 105. 
>
> This 2009 dissertation significantly extends my previous 2005 ACSAC paper. For example, I now have a formal proof 
> that DDC is effective (the ACSAC paper only had an informal justification). I also have additional demonstrations, 
> including one with GCC (to show that it scales up) and one with a maliciously corrupted compiler (to show that it 
> really does detect them in the real world). The dissertation is also more general; the ACSAC paper only considered 
> the special case of a "self-parenting" compiler, while the dissertation eliminates that assumption.

David, this is very cool indeed. Thank you for sharing, and a lot of luck!

I'd like to note in a semi-related fashion that the concept of trusting 
trust, while in the original paper limited to the compiler case, is a 
generic concept in security and could go on up and down the chain of 
trust forever (beyond the compiler), until at some point you take 
something on blind faith.

        Gadi.


> --- David A. Wheeler
>
>
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-- 
Gadi Evron,
ge at linuxbox.org.

Blog: http://gevron.livejournal.com/