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182 points yarapavan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.224s | source
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neuroelectron ◴[] No.43616167[source]
Very suspicious article. Sounds like the "nothing to see here folks, move along" school of security.

Reproducibility is more like a security smell; a symptom you’re doing things right. Determinism is the correct target and subtly different.

The focus on supply chain is a distraction, a variant of The “trusting trust” attack Ken Thompson described in 1984 is still among the most elegant and devastating. Infected development toolchains can spread horizontally to “secure” builds.

Just because it’s open doesn’t mean anyone’s been watching closely. "50 years of security"? Important pillars of OSS have been touched by thousands of contributors with varying levels of oversight. Many commits predate strong code-signing or provenance tracking. If a compiler was compromised at any point, everything it compiled—including future versions of itself—could carry that compromise forward invisibly. This includes even "cleanroom" rebuilds.

replies(4): >>43616257 #>>43617725 #>>43621870 #>>43622202 #
1. arkh ◴[] No.43622202[source]
> Infected development toolchains can spread horizontally to “secure” builds.

Nowadays there are so many microcontrolers in your PC an hardware vendor could simply infect: your SSD, HDD, Motherboard or part of the processor. Good luck bootstrapping from hand rolled NAND.