A Washington Post Newsbyte article reports that a suspected Al Qaeda member arrested in India claimed other member terrorists hacked Microsoft's Window XP. He claimed that various member infiltrated Microsoft and inserted trapdoors and trojan horse routines into the new Microsoft operating system.
My first comment was "Good, maybe they improved the product!" <g> But I'll hold off the Microsoft buggy software jokes for now. <muffled laughter> Seriously, I am cautious with this claim of Windows XP being sabotaged by Al Qaeda. The claim could be a false one intended to hit Microsoft sales by making people nervous about the product. (If the NSAKEY and other Windows traits haven't already.) But there are many other well established reasons to consider other operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD over Microsoft Windows. One of the nice things about open source approach is way it levels the playing field. Harder to slip in backdoors, logic bombs, etc. than with closed source or "shared source" approaches. J.D. Abolins Suspect Claims Al Qaeda Hacked Microsoft - Expert By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes REDMOND, WASHINGTON, U.S.A., 17 Dec 2001, 2:08 PM CST It can be found at http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/173039.html
