Slug: AssuredTooChain
Title: Issues of an Assured Tool-Chain
Date: 2016-12-15 22:44
Category: FutureWork

We do not have any assurance that our basic tools are not compromised.

* Compilers
* Operating Systems
* Hardware Platforms
* Verilog and Other Tools to Produce Chips


At the base, is the compiler.  The fear was first formally expressed in
Ken Thompson's 1984 Turing Award Lecture
[Reflections on Trusting Trust](http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf).

David A. Wheeler's PhD thesis, [Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling](http://www.dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/)
outlines how we might deal with the compiler trust conundrum.