Re: Storm in a teacup.
Planting backdoors in many consumer devices (including routers) is supposedly tricky, too
Who on earth told you that?
Or are you trying to tell me that the test suite is something the secret services are not privy to?
Not at all.
But when you consider that each build happens 3 times - with the original compiler, then with the output of that, then with the output of *that* - it's actually very difficult to build in a backdoor that will go through all the tests without showing itself.
And then when the next drop comes about, those 3 builds are repeated - possibly with a different set of tests at the end. The *same* backdoor code would also have to cope with that eventuality without being discovered.
Once you've gone round this loop 10 or more times - as I have - the probability of some bad guy putting a backdoor into the code is *vanishingly* small. It would be much easier to drill through my roof and put a camera in the loft.
Vic.