On Mon, Nov 16, 1998 at 06:21:34PM -0800, Javilk wrote:
> As I recall, the ATT version of UNIX, at one point, had a built-in
> back door generator put there by one of the guys who designed it. [...]
This is close to what happened, but not quite.
The author of this was Ken Thompson, who along with Dennis Ritchie,
is credited with co-authorship of Unix. And AT&T did not discover
this bug -- *nobody* discovered this, because he did something very, very
clever by embedding it in the binary, not the source, of the C compiler.
The story is contained in the lecture that he gave on receiving
the ACM's Turing Award (with Dennis), "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
It's been reprinted in any number of places, for example "ACM Turing
Award Lectures: The First Twenty Years, 1966-1985", ACM Press, Ed. by
Ashenhurst and Graham, ISBN 0-201-07794-9.
I've often wondered how many times I propagated Ken's trojan horse
for him. ;-)
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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