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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17720 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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it's never been done

I guess xz is not a true scotsman, is XCodeGhost a true scotsman?

which is easily done in the age of machine intelligence

So your answer to the criticism that the attack surface is large is to make it even larger?

Compiler trojans don't live in source, the whole point is that they're in the binary, so what you're proposing here is to run every single binary through some kind of transformer, and then in turn trust both that the transformer is perfect at finding exploits (which we know is not the case, since we have no reliable countermeasure against injections at this time), but also that they have not been tampered with.

As to the proposition that the stakes of validating mathematical propositions are low, need I remind you that essentially all bank accounts, all forms of identification, all permissioned computer systems, and basically everything these days is only the way it is because certain non-obvious mathematical propositions are true? If you own cryptographers, you own everything.

I mean how exactly can you propose to stand here and tell me that the NSA would not have backdoors in post-quantum encryption algorithms if they could, and that they wouldn't compromise formal proof systems if that gave them a better chance of achieving those goals?

I guess xz is not a true scotsman, is XCodeGhost a true scotsman?

Closer, but it's both missing the viral nature of the KTH and also it's coarse - it simply tacks on some libraries. Creating a compiler bug that corrupts every compiler it compiles in the same way and corrupts Lean in a particular way in a way that's robust to refactorings of Lean and every other compiler basically requires you to have AGI in the compiler.

So your answer to the criticism that the attack surface is large is to make it even larger?

Adding monitoring doesn't increase the attack surface.

Compiler trojans don't live in source

They must be in source at some point, that's the whole point of the KTH. You introduce a bug that transmits itself to every compiler that is built, and then you can fix the bug because it will be inserted if it's built by a compromised compiler. But it must be in the source code to begin with.

that they wouldn't compromise formal proof systems if that gave them a better chance of achieving those goals?

Compromising implementations is just better. You don't run the risk of infecting your toolchain with your exploit. Nobody asks questions about why you don't use the same algorithms as everyone else. It's also eminently practical, unlike introducing a viral compiler bug that only acts up when you try to validate a crypto proof with lean.

Adding monitoring doesn't increase the attack surface.

My mistake, if jailed properly it's not in the operation chain.

Creating a compiler bug that corrupts every compiler it compiles in the same way and corrupts Lean in a particular way in a way that's robust to refactorings of Lean and every other compiler basically requires you to have AGI in the compiler.

Of course the longer the chain the more complicated it gets. But you don't need to go that far:

  1. identify regular pattern in the memory of Lean that identifies return patterns accross fuzzing
  2. write binary patch that hijacks this and changes the result based on finding a specific string in a predictable memory range
  3. write GCC patch that introduces that binary patch into lean compiles
  4. swap a Lean build's GCC for the compromised version somehow
  5. You can now prove anything at will

Compromising implementations is just better.

Doesn't matter, we know for a fact they did it at the research level for DUAL_EC_DRBG and DES.

Of course the longer the chain the more complicated it gets. But you don't need to go that far

Steps 1 and 2 are hilariously brittle. Step 3 needs to be done to all compilers and it needs to propagate itself into every compiler that the compilers build, otherwise it's a simple matter of fixing the compiler bug or compiling Lean with another compiler. Step 5 runs the risk of proving an obviously false theorem at which point the jig is up.

On top of all this, your op gets blown if someone just bootstraps GCC starting with a compiler simple enough to manually verify the binary of.

Doesn't matter, we know for a fact they did it at the research level for DUAL_EC_DRBG and DES.

Getting people to use an inherently insecure algorithm doesn't run the risk of infecting your own tooling with the bug. The NSA would also like to be able to formally verify proofs.

I'll gladly concede that these attacks are very difficult to execute since you seem to be conceding that they are possible.

But since this is about the epistemological posture of mathematics as a discipline, does it not strike you as scandalous that the hardest form of knowledge available to us is now at the mercy of who controls infrastructure rather than the careful application of reason?

Mathematics becoming a posteriori seems momentous to me.

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