Reflections on trusting trust
K Thompson - Communications of the ACM, 1984 - dl.acm.org
Communications of the ACM, 1984•dl.acm.org
Reflections on trusting trust Page 1 TURING AWARD LECTURE Reflections on Trusting Trust
To wh:t extent sh.ou!d one tr~st a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses. Perhaps It IS
more Important to trust the people who wrote the software. KEN THOMPSON INTRODUCTION
I thank the ACM for this award. I can't help but feel that I am receiving this honor for timing and
serendipity as much as technical merit. UNIX1 swept into popularity with an industry-wide
change from central mainframes to autonomous minis. I suspect that Daniel Bobrow [1] would …
To wh:t extent sh.ou!d one tr~st a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses. Perhaps It IS
more Important to trust the people who wrote the software. KEN THOMPSON INTRODUCTION
I thank the ACM for this award. I can't help but feel that I am receiving this honor for timing and
serendipity as much as technical merit. UNIX1 swept into popularity with an industry-wide
change from central mainframes to autonomous minis. I suspect that Daniel Bobrow [1] would …
To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software.
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