<story><title>NSA Wanted Backdoor Access in Linux, Says Linus Torvalds’ Father</title><url>https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/11/nsa-ask-linus-torvalds-include-backdoors-linux-father-says-yes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btilly</author><text>Anyone who doesn&amp;#x27;t think that NSA has backdoor access in Linux is a naïve optimist.&lt;p&gt;All that the NSA needs is a security hole.  They can generate them by submitting reasonable code whose misbehavior is hard to spot, like &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.underhanded-c.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.underhanded-c.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;, or by searching for holes that already exist in the wild.  And if you wind up putting a proprietary driver into your computer and they got a hole in the driver, you do even better.&lt;p&gt;Given the NSA&amp;#x27;s resources and the rate at which groups like Project Zero find bugs, they certainly have multiple ways in to any system that they want.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xorcist</author><text>&amp;gt; reasonable code whose misbehavior is hard to spot,&lt;p&gt;Have you submitted code to Linux? It&amp;#x27;s routine that people are told to rewrite something in a more clear way.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying that it&amp;#x27;s impossible, far from it, but it&amp;#x27;s not like you could just submit something and have it accepted. You&amp;#x27;d have to put a lot of work over a long time and be very careful, preferably with one of the more obscure drivers. Then again, enormous patience and budgets are what the three letter agencies are best at.</text></comment>
<story><title>NSA Wanted Backdoor Access in Linux, Says Linus Torvalds’ Father</title><url>https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/11/nsa-ask-linus-torvalds-include-backdoors-linux-father-says-yes</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>btilly</author><text>Anyone who doesn&amp;#x27;t think that NSA has backdoor access in Linux is a naïve optimist.&lt;p&gt;All that the NSA needs is a security hole.  They can generate them by submitting reasonable code whose misbehavior is hard to spot, like &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.underhanded-c.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.underhanded-c.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;, or by searching for holes that already exist in the wild.  And if you wind up putting a proprietary driver into your computer and they got a hole in the driver, you do even better.&lt;p&gt;Given the NSA&amp;#x27;s resources and the rate at which groups like Project Zero find bugs, they certainly have multiple ways in to any system that they want.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dastx</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think people think that NSA doesn&amp;#x27;t have backdoor access in Linux.&lt;p&gt;But I think there&amp;#x27;s a huge difference between the maintainers purposefully implemented a backdoor for the NSA, and the NSA found exploits to gain backdoor.&lt;p&gt;Given that, what I&amp;#x27;m more interested in is why Linus would say no when asked.</text></comment>