Security ?

[Alan Cox]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:42:44 +0000 (UTC)
JB <jb.1234abcd at gmail.com> wrote:

> JB <jb.1234abcd <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > ...
> 
> http://blogs.csoonline.com/1296/an_fbi_backdoor_in_openbsd
> 
> http://maycontaintracesofbolts.blogspot.com/2010/12/openbsd-ipsec-backdoor-allegations.html

Who knows - stranger things have happened - eg the PPP William Simpson
affair of some years ago shows the US is prepared to meddle in standards
and in trying to stop crypto, as does the Bernstein case.

The logical response to open source would however have been to put any
holes in firmware, preferably externally exposed firmware - which also
helps make it OS agnostic. Other countries have their own CPU designs
because they don't trust mass market ones. Similarly during the arguments
about crypto one of the memorable positions was "We should allow our
crypto chips to be exported, because we'd rather they used our backdoored
chips than Chinese backdoored chips" ;)

Otherwise you have the problem that any US inserted backdoor will be
found by the Chinese, UK, Indian, Israeli and other security services, and
probably organised crime rings.

Alan