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Some of those who analysed the flaw claimed that the routines responsible for the vulnerability had no purpose other than to provide such access -- Microsoft disagrees.

Now, while it makes good press to hype up such conspiracy theories, I recall that old but very true saying that one should never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.

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Let's face it, if Microsoft wanted to install back-door capabilities in Windows and its applications, there are probably a lot better ways to do so than by requiring the machine to access a WMF file as the trigger.

But is it possible that MS has included back-door software in Windows?

Yes, it's very possible -- in fact it could be argued that it's not just possible but pretty likely.

In these times of "The War Against Terror", we've seen many personal freedoms and rights compromised in the name of "national security" and I strongly suspect that the US Government would just love to be able to access any Windows-based PC (ie: 95% of the world's computers) as and when they wanted.

Microsoft, always wanting to be seen as a patriotic player and keen to have the US government in its debt, would almost certainly bend over backwards to accommodate any requests for such functionality.

So why has nobody spotted this back-door, if it really does exist?

Well, unlike Linux and other open-source alternatives, Windows is proprietary and regular folks like you and I don't get to see the source code.

Indeed, it's unlikely that many Microsoft employees have ever seen the entire source code to a product like Windows XP. The sheer size and complexity of this product, combined with modern structured programming strategies, means that most programmers working on XP would only have knowledge of a relatively small part of the system.

As a result of this, it would be quite possible for a "special division" within MS to ensure that the necessary backdoor code was integrated to the product prior to the burning of the final images.

What about the ethics of such a backdoor system?

Should anyone have the right to covertly access your PC without your permission for whatever purpose?

Well we accept that the police and other state-empowered officers can violate our privacy and property with impunity when "the greater good" is being protected, so why not allow them to access our PCs too?

Just think... DIA could regularly scan everyone's PCs for kiddy-porn, the SIS could check for possible terrorist plots, WINZ could identify the occasional instance of benefit fraud and surely we'd all be better off.

Or could it be that individual privacy is a right that should not be relinquished quite so freely?

To be honest, I strongly doubt that there is any backdoor functionality in Windows -- the risk of it being discovered and mis-used by evil sods is simply far too great.

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