Another way of making spyware

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Hacked Keyboards, now compilers... When will it end!

Thanks for posting, I compile in C and VB all the time...
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We looked into things like this about the time that lecture was given for the ACM. I remember back in 1983 having a programming assignment to design a program that would run small programs that would battle one another in a game we called "Core Wars" where programs would battle in the core of a computer to take over the computer.

The most successful programs were ones who could copy themselves, and then jump to the new location.

They would tend to over-write programs of their competitor and eventually the competitors CPU cycles were consumed executing your code.

I would think a compiler vendor would have some sort of means of validating compiler output, to see that it doesn't produce infected code.

It's certainly something to be concerned about. However, since the lecture given at the ACM was back in 1984, I'm thinking compiler vendors have some safeguards to help prevent compromised compilers from making their way to the street.

However, what controls are there on open source compilers, etc?

Seems like the virus is just changing how the compiler works, and getting it to build objects that are infected.

I don't think this is a shipment of an infected compiler, but a virus that infects a compiler if discovered on your machine.

Interesting idea, very clever. Just like our little core wars program that seeks to copy itself all around and gets others to devote CPU cycles to do it's dirty work.
 
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