History is written by the winners. In 1999 it was disclosed [1] that m$ had a variable name _NSAKEY in the windoze. In 1998 Halloween Documents [2] document leaked showing microsoft's strategy against free software and especially linux. Due to lameness m$ couldn't predict android will run on linux kernel In early 2000 major malware like Code Red and Nimda hit m$, showing to m$ the meaning of word "security". Nimbda exploited the brain damaged loading dynamic libraries from the current working directory (I might have written something on this). In 2003 [3] debian shipped backdoored micq (the backdoor is debian specific). IIRC there was a quarrel between the debian package maintainer and the micq developer. Links to wikipedia are permanent snapshots [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NSAKEY&oldid=891818118 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Halloween_documents&oldid=895695365 [3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/02/msg00771.html