Researchers demonstrate that Ken Thompson's classic 'trusting-trust' attack can be extended beyond compilers to compromise an entire Linux distribution via the strip utility. The work proves that the attack paradigm is not limited to compilers and can apply to other build chain tools.
Background
Ken Thompson's 1984 Turing Award lecture famously described a trusting-trust attack using a compromised C compiler. This paper extends the concept to post-compilation build tools like strip, showing a broader attack surface in the Linux build pipeline.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Sep 5, 2026 at 06:58 PM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10