Did the founder of Linux allow the Feds to put a backdoor into his operating system? While Linus Torvalds acknowledges that he was approached, he denied that he gave into the request.

Rumors persist that Microsoft, Linux and security protection products have been subverted to allow access by the feds, much of this is fueled by the revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

These claims from Snowden suggest that the NSA can crack TLS/SSL-encrypted connections, the widespread crypto securing HTTPS websites and virtual private networks (VPNs). by gaining access to the root certificates and encryption keys, exploiting backdoors in equipment and algorithms, the Feds can compromise these supposedly secure communications.

Peter Biddle, an ex-Microsoft programmer, as well as Nico Sell, founder of the pro-privacy self-destructing-messages app Wickr, have both stated that they were approached by the FBI to put backdoors into their products, supposedly to have access to data on child pornography systems.

In light of these revelations, worried netizens have become far more paranoid about the possibility of backdoors in the technology they use and this paranoia extends to both closed-source and open-source software.