Please have a look at David A. Wheeler’s page on Trusting trust [1], including his 2009 PhD dissertation [2], where he clearly demonstrates that it is possible to have trusted (not in the MS sense...) computers (I think).
You may also be interested in 'Countering "Trusting Trust"' on Schneier's website [3], which discusses a 2006 paper, also by Wheeler.
David Wheelers work is very interesting, but it does not solve all the fundamental trust issues in computing.
It allows us to check if our compilers, linkers etc are maliciously modifying the programs being handled in a way not represented by their source code. It does not help us to determine if the firmware or CPU microcode, for example, have backdoors.
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(This comment originally posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8023247 )
Please have a look at David A. Wheeler’s page on Trusting trust [1], including his 2009 PhD dissertation [2], where he clearly demonstrates that it is possible to have trusted (not in the MS sense...) computers (I think).
You may also be interested in 'Countering "Trusting Trust"' on Schneier's website [3], which discusses a 2006 paper, also by Wheeler.
[1] http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/
[2] http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/dissertation/html/whe....
[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_tr....
David Wheelers work is very interesting, but it does not solve all the fundamental trust issues in computing.
It allows us to check if our compilers, linkers etc are maliciously modifying the programs being handled in a way not represented by their source code. It does not help us to determine if the firmware or CPU microcode, for example, have backdoors.
Your second and third links come out dead for me, ending in ... .
It appears he's copied them verbatim, including the ellipsis, the broken links (from the original post) are supposed to be;
[2] http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/dissertation/html/whe...
[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_tr...