Ken Thompson (1984)
Communications of the ACM, 27(8), 761-763.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/358198.358210
Abstract. Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture. He shows how a compiler can be modified to insert a backdoor that survives recompilation from clean source, arguing that 'you can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself.' Still one of the most-cited papers in computer security.
Tags: security unix foundational
