[comp.emacs] Backdoor rumor

jym@AI.MIT.EDU (Jym Dyer) (01/26/91)

___
__  Think how silly this rumor is.  GNU Emacs is distributed with
_   source.  If there was a backdoor, it would be discovered right
    away.
___
__  There is no greater security than having the source!
_   <_Jym_>

worley@compass.com (Dale Worley) (01/30/91)

   From: jym@AI.MIT.EDU (Jym Dyer)

   Think how silly this rumor is.  GNU Emacs is distributed with
   source.  If there was a backdoor, it would be discovered right
   away.

   There is no greater security than having the source!

Oh, please!  This would be true only if all properties of a program
could be determined easily by looking at the source.  In computability
theory there is a theorem that says that *no* interesting property of
a program can always be determined by looking at the source.  In
reality, the existence of bugs shows that nothing can be determined
easily by looking at the source.

Dale Worley		Compass, Inc.			worley@compass.com
--
You CAN be what you WON'T!  -- "Bob"

rms@AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) (02/05/91)

It's true that you can never be sure a program as big as Emacs is
correct.  (Not with today's technology, at least.)

However, there has never been a backdoor in Emacs, that I know of;
what The Cuckoo's Egg says about this is misleading.  LBL created a
backdoor by making movemail setuid root.  movemail at that time wasn't
designed for such use.  (Now it is--just in case.)