Can I trust downloading Python?

[Michael Torrie]

On 09/09/2013 05:02 AM, Anthony Papillion wrote:
> But (and this is stepping into *really* paranoid territory here. But
> maybe not beyond the realm of possibility) it would not be so hard to
> compromise compilers at the chip level. If the NSA were to strike an
> agreement with, say, Intel so that every time a compiler ran on the
> system, secret code was discreetly inserted into the binary, it would be
> nearly impossible to detect and a very elegant solution to a tough problem.

Indeed it is really paranoid territory, but now doesn't seem quite as
far fetched as one originally thought a few years ago!  We'll still
trust (we have to; we have no other choice), but the level of trust in
computers in general has certainly gone down a notch and will never
quite be the same.