Comment by kazinator

> Several days later, an AT&T tech shows up with a disk and loads the proper compile and linker source and we recompile the compiler from the source.

Because he would bill for less time if he just showed up with the compiler binaries and copied them over the rogue ones?

"Let's take pristine source across the air-gap, and manipulate it on the infected computer where there is nonzero risk that the wrong compiler could somehow compile it."

What if the kernel, C library or utilities in /bin and /usr/bin had been involved too?