<story><title>Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?</title><url>https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=151233345723889&amp;w=2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hood_syntax</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure that attack you describe is mentioned in literature as essentially undefeatable. I really wish I could remember exactly what the name of it was; the gist is, there has to be a first compiler somewhere. If at any point in the chain, the compiler is infected with a self-propagating virus that hides itself in the byte code of the binary, it can ensure that the exploit is in every future version of the compiler.&lt;p&gt;I may be remembering the details a bit wrong, but it was a good read.</text></item><item><author>akerro</author><text>&amp;gt;Such ecosystems come with incredible costs.  For instance, rust cannot
&amp;gt;even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the
&amp;gt;address space.&lt;p&gt;Is cargo supported on i386 platforms? Also Rust complies itself, afaik there is no way to compile Rust&amp;#x2F;Cargo but to use previous version of it. If one of the past builds of Rust is backdoored, any version between then and now is backdoored, language is safe, environment... as safe as it was never compromised. OpenBSD compiles everywhere where C code works, Rust&amp;#x2F;Cargo works where it&amp;#x27;s supported and it will takes decades to catch-up on some architectures.</text></item><item><author>xwvvvvwx</author><text>Maybe I&amp;#x27;m misunderstanding but there is a pretty serious effort to rewrite all the gnu coreutils in Rust:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;uutils&amp;#x2F;coreutils&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;uutils&amp;#x2F;coreutils&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zdw</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re looking for &amp;quot;Reflections on Trusting Trust&amp;quot; by Ken Thompson, one of the original co-authors of Unix:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dl.acm.org&amp;#x2F;citation.cfm?id=358210&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dl.acm.org&amp;#x2F;citation.cfm?id=358210&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Integrating “safe” languages into OpenBSD?</title><url>https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&amp;m=151233345723889&amp;w=2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hood_syntax</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure that attack you describe is mentioned in literature as essentially undefeatable. I really wish I could remember exactly what the name of it was; the gist is, there has to be a first compiler somewhere. If at any point in the chain, the compiler is infected with a self-propagating virus that hides itself in the byte code of the binary, it can ensure that the exploit is in every future version of the compiler.&lt;p&gt;I may be remembering the details a bit wrong, but it was a good read.</text></item><item><author>akerro</author><text>&amp;gt;Such ecosystems come with incredible costs.  For instance, rust cannot
&amp;gt;even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the
&amp;gt;address space.&lt;p&gt;Is cargo supported on i386 platforms? Also Rust complies itself, afaik there is no way to compile Rust&amp;#x2F;Cargo but to use previous version of it. If one of the past builds of Rust is backdoored, any version between then and now is backdoored, language is safe, environment... as safe as it was never compromised. OpenBSD compiles everywhere where C code works, Rust&amp;#x2F;Cargo works where it&amp;#x27;s supported and it will takes decades to catch-up on some architectures.</text></item><item><author>xwvvvvwx</author><text>Maybe I&amp;#x27;m misunderstanding but there is a pretty serious effort to rewrite all the gnu coreutils in Rust:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;uutils&amp;#x2F;coreutils&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;uutils&amp;#x2F;coreutils&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>edwincheese</author><text>I think you are referring to “Reflections on Trusting Trust” by Ken Thompson.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ece.cmu.edu&amp;#x2F;~ganger&amp;#x2F;712.fall02&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;p761-thompson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ece.cmu.edu&amp;#x2F;~ganger&amp;#x2F;712.fall02&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;p761-thomp...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>