The premise that a large, US-based software company needs pressure from intelligence agencies to write a backdoor in their product isn't historically accurate.

The premise that a large, US-based software company needs pressure from intelligence agencies to write a backdoor in their product isn't historically accurate. For example, Microsoft developers invented the idea of USB AutoRun -- that an executable on a USB drive is executed automatically when the drive is plugged in -- without any kind of pressure. That feature is responsible for the Buckshot Yankee attack,[1] early Stuxnet,[2] and of course COFEE.[3] COFEE in particular was certainly not a bug or written by a single mole. On the other hand there is no evidence of open-source projects going out of their way to accommodate intelligence agencies in the same way Microsoft has. Without this active collaboration from developers, it is far more difficult to backdoor software. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/24/AR2010082406495.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08... [2] http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/stuxnet-lnk-file-vulnerability http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/stuxnet-lnk-file-vulne... [3] https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Microsoft_COFEE_(Computer_Online_Forensics_Evidence_Extractor)_tool_and_documentation,_Sep_2009 https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Microsoft_COFEE_(Computer_Online_...