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> excised immediately

Only if the backdoor is obvious. I doubt they would introduce a backdoor that reads

`if ($PWD = "supersecretbackdoorpwd") loginAs("root");`

But a subtle buffer overrun resulting in a 0day that's only obvious to the writers - that's much more likely.

Check out the Underhanded C contest for examples of ways exploits can hide in plain sight.

EDIT: I'm not saying that's what going to happen with Alibaba & MariaDb. I'm just saying that "open source" != "free of exploits and backdoors". One of the biggest untruths about open source is that, with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.



The backdoor would either be obvious (ie make outgoing connections) or it would have debatable value (maybe a killswitch?)




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