[5754] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: having source code for your CPU chip -- NOT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Honig)
Fri Sep 24 14:20:44 1999
Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990923224908.007ec2a0@pop.sprynet.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 22:49:08 -0700
To: eli+@cs.cmu.edu, crypto list <cryptography@c2.net>
From: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
In-Reply-To: <199909232239.PAA13902@blacklodge.c2.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 06:38 PM 9/23/99 -0400, Eli Brandt wrote:
>Arnold Reinhold wrote:
>> Perry, if you really believe that the question of whether a given
>> lump of object code contains a Thompson Trap is formally undecidable
>> I'd be interested in seeing a proof. Otherwise Herr Goedel has
>> nothing to do with this.
>
>That sure smells undecidable to me. Any non-trivial predicate P on
Folks, its not that complex. Thompson suggested that
the trojan compiler subvert only login and compiler code. The trojan
would not subvert generic
code; no funky Godelian self-referential stuff is necessary. Of course,
this was before the 90s: the net, downloadable
code, chronically lame OSes made other approaches much easier.
