No, the Government Never Asked Linus Torvalds for a Backdoor in Linux

Contrary to some online reports, Linus Torvalds, a founder of Linux, was never asked by the U.S. government to put a backdoor into the popular open source operating system

The misunderstanding, reported by Slashdot, The Register, The Hacker News and others, was caused by a simple joke that was taken too seriously.

Torvalds was asked if he had ever been approached by the U.S. government for a backdoor at the Linuxcon conference in New Orleans on Thursday. (A backdoor is term used to describe a hidden vulnerability in a program that could conceivably allow an entity to access information on Linux computers without users' knowledge.) Torvalds, in his usual tongue-in-cheek style, answered "no" while nodding yes Read more...