CS338 Computer Security
Friday, 8 November 2024

+ That AI/jobs question from Wednesday

+ Anything else on your minds?

+ Ken Thompson: Reflections on Trusting Trust
- Summary?
    - Process
        modify gcc source code to make it insert
            backdoor into the login program
            and to insert THIS MALICIOUS CODE
            into gcc when compiling gcc
        recompile gcc
        delete the code modifications
        recompile gcc as many times as you want, and
            it will re-insert the malicious code
        recompile login, and that is malicious too
- What did you find notable?
- What's his point?
    - a little historical context about 1983-84
    - Wargames movie
    - after this essay, some people blamed Thompson for
        unleashing viruses on the world
      but: "security by obscurity" doesn't work
- Minor thing: UNIX, Unix, and who Thompson worked for
- Other Thompson achievements
    Unix, regex, UTF-8, Go, Plan-9,...

+ Malware
- Vocabulary/taxonomy
    - worms
    - viruses
    - trojan horses
    - backdoors
    - rootkits
    - ransomware
    - ...

- I don't care about the specific taxonmy. What I *do* care about:
    - how does it move onto a new computer?
    - how does it get executed?
    - (payload can be anything, so I don't care about that much either)

- Examples
    - ???

[Countdown to Zero Day, Kim Zetter]

- Look at Wikipedia's timeline. It's really good.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computer_viruses_and_worms

+ Lab: a little more pen-testing
- Host detection
- Port scanning
- Website brute-forcing

+ Have a great weekend



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    - (mirai, 80s games, windows autorun,...)