[105841] in Cypherpunks
Re: Is Open Source safe? [Linux Weekly News]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Minow)
Mon Nov 23 13:10:40 1998
In-Reply-To: <36595F29.C39B997A@brd.ie>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 09:43:04 -0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>
Reply-To: Martin Minow <minow@pobox.com>
Frank O'Dwyer <fod@brd.ie> opines:
>
>Yes it does, but not quite in the same way. For example, I believe that
>in days of yore some attackers managed to insert a back door into some
>DEC OS by breaking into the coding environment (I don't recall the
>details, does anyone else?).
<http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/> describes how the inventors
of Unix inserted a backdoor into the Unix login program. It's well
worth reading. However, there is no indication that this trojan
horse ever shipped to customers.
>So in other words, not only _could_ this
>happen with non-OSS, it _has_ happened, and no doubt it happens
>reasonably often.
I doubt it.
Martin Minow
minow@pobox.com
