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A comment on Reflections on Trusting Trust (Ken Thompson's Turing Award speech). Parent comment

Re:Reflections on Trusting Trust (Ken Thompson's Turing Awar... by gnosis on Saturday June 11, 2011 @11:37PM (#2645580)
"You can then write a transforming program that converts C into MCL. Then you will compile your new compiler code with the compromised compiler. This will give you MCL compiler. It will still contain the backdoor logic. However, that logic will be deemed irrelevant."

If your transformations preserved behavior wouldn't the backdoor still be there?

What does it matter which language the compiler compiles its code in to as long as the behavior remains the same?

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Re:Reflections on Trusting Trust (Ken Thompson's Turing Awar... by jleader on Sunday June 12, 2011 @02:16PM (#2647022)
The original scheme recognized a particular sequence of code; recognizing particular behavior no matter how it's implemented is in theory equivalent to the halting problem, I think.
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