[flyinRyan]

Ok, I appreciate this information (and I'm trying to follow the discussion but I didn't see you talking of Ken's work).

But I'm still curious; even though you can write the disassembler by hand, how can you be sure that you're compiling it with a non-compromised compiler? Or do you mean write it in e.g. ELF format directly (and that's assuming the OS isn't involved in filtering offending code, though it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the OS could be generally modified in such away without detection)?

[dllthomas]

The more general and diverse the tools you use, the less likely they are all compromised in the same way, and the more likely any compromise will show up in other contexts. Using tools at different meta-levels may also be worthwhile (machine-code vs. interpreter).

[iopq]

write a disassembler in machine code, of course :)