Is Open Source safe? [Linux Weekly News]

[Martin Minow]

Frank O'Dwyer <fod at 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 at pobox.com