Advanced

Invisible Armies

Story: Linux exploit gets around security barrierTotal Replies: 1
Author Content
phsolide

Jul 21, 2009
4:54 PM EDT 		Has anybody else read Jon Evan's "Invisible Armies"?

This bug is shockingly like one mentioned in the book, on page 300 of my hardback copy. It's the second section of Chapter 10 of the "America 3 months later" division of the book.

The villain has a CD full of exploits "stolen from the military". An "undiscovered fundamental exploit" in the linux kernel exists, in the way that GCC compiles the kernel.

Kind of makes me think I should recompile my kernel with "tcc", the only other C compiler to ever compile the Linux kernel. Probably take an enormous performance hit, though.
rezendi

Jul 23, 2009
11:42 AM EDT 		Hey there. Jon Evans here - stumbled across this while ego-surfing.

That fictional exploit was actually inspired by Ken Thompson's famous paper Reflections on Trusting Trust (http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html) (and see also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)), but it's interesting, in a black-comedy life-imitating-art sort of way, to see a real live example out there in the wild.

Post a reply to this thread:

A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.

Your message:
|||||
10
Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help

Sign up and post (it is free)  or  Log in and post