Does Windows 7 have a Hidden Back Door?

The MS team released a toolkit last month, called the “compliance Management Toolkit.”  The purpose of this new tool is help SysAdmins implement a secure network – no one wants to have a network full of security issues.

Since the release of this tool, claims of a hidden backdoor, a secret way into your computer, have flooded the internet.

The rumor mills started ramping up after an NSA official told a Senate homeland security sub-committee that the NSA (National Security Agency) had contributed to the development of the Windows 7 OS security guide.  The official also explained that they had worked with the other major OS providers, including Apple, RedHat, and Sun.  The NSA contribution was to ensure that each OS was officially secure, but the conspiracy theorists see the NSA as a less than altruistic agency.

Microsoft denies that there is any back door – secret or otherwise, and that the NSA’s involvement was purely administrative, a “rubber-stamp” to satisfy the new requirements of the US Government to ensure that the economy is not vulnerable due to IT infrastructure security issues.

The conspiracy theorists are fixated on the language that MS is using in their denial of a back door.  The official statement of “Microsoft has not and will not put ‘backdoors’ into Windows 7,” has some feeling that this is lawyerspeak.  The theorists are claiming that the NSA is the team that has added the backdoor, and MS is able to provide a semi-plausible deniability by claiming not to know.

Is there a secret way into your computer that only the proper legal authorities can use?  And if there is, what’s to stop hackers from exploiting this opportunity? What are your thoughts?

-         Jason