If you are concerned about privacy and security in computer systems, please read On Trusting Trust, it changed my view when I first read it.

http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf
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@coyote so if I read correctly, I can't truly trust anything unless it's built from something ultimately built from (or a tool with a chain of trust to) a compiler in machine code i've made myself?

even the linux from scratch fails this test

@danzaburou I think every computer fails this test, especially when considering firmware code. Basically only TempleOS was secure, and only for Terry. Pretty frightening that even he needed modern hardware (thus, black boxes) to do what he did.

Really, it's asking for a reevaluation on Trust itself, and asking if Trust is trustable, and it makes this argument well with good examples... Although I'm not an expert on computer security or even that learned on compilers and such, I just think this paper has enormous importance and I'm glad people still think so and read it. When I first read it, that's when I found Linux and stopped using windows. I started to wonder about what my computer was *really doing.* It was thanks to this paper that I came to these realizations.
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