| To be clear about the technical facts: good luck pushing that engineered backdoor to an iPhone without Apple's keys. Having your source code stolen gives your competitors an edge by letting them know, for free, how you've implemented things that might have cost you millions/billions to research and produce. The biggest threat to having source code stolen is exposing the potentially embarrassing paperclips, string and gum holding a product together. > Hasn't happened yet has it? Years ago and at the time the most profitable software company, Microsoft had its flagship products, the NT kernel and Windows 2000, source code leak. It isn't unheard of. > I don't think the overall security risk increases by the existence of a backdoor on a single phone. If the precedent is set for this single phone, then the security of other phones is at stake. This is also a red herring. It is not about this singular phone. edit: You do not need the source code to find a backdoor or vulnerability[0] [0] every closed-source product that's ever been exploited |