[dwheeler]

Hi, I'm the author of the referenced article. Thanks for pointing to it!

However, can you change HN thread to the article title, which is: "The Apple goto fail vulnerability: lessons learned"?

I never used the term "backdoor" in the entire article, and I certainly never claimed that this was an intentional backdoor or that it looked just like a backdoor. I said, "The Apple goto fail vulnerability was a dangerous vulnerability that should have been found by Apple." - but I never said it was intentional. I personally doubt it was intentional (it's possible, but I have no specific evidence suggesting it).

While I'm here... ask me anything (AMA)!

[dang]

Fixed now. Thanks!

(Submitted title was "The Most Backdoor-Looking Bug I’ve Ever Seen: Apple's goto fail bug (2014)". Submitters: please don't do that—it's against the site guidelines, which ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." We eventually take submission privileges away for breaking that rule, so please follow it.)

[dwheeler]

Thanks! And while I'm here, THANK YOU for all the thankless work you do. MANY people, including me, appreciate it!

[MrXOR]

Excuse me.

[dwheeler]

No problem! Thanks for pointing people to the article, I write articles with the hope that someone will read them :-).

That article is part of a series of articles called "Learning from Disaster": https://dwheeler.com/essays/learning-from-disaster.html I think we can learn from the past, and sometimes learning a story & working to gain lessons learned from it can really help.

[MrXOR]

Excuse me for changing the title of your essay. I should not do that.

The title was just my opinion. Some days ago, I read the excellent newsletter [1] of Filippo Valsorda about a Telegram's bug [2]. Yesterday, I googled for bugdoors and read about them and found this Apple's bug and your excellent essay (with many useful hyperlinks) about it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726068

[2] https://habrahabr.ru/post/206900

[dwheeler]

> ... your excellent essay (with many useful hyperlinks) about it.

Thank you so much!

[olliej]

This was obviously a merge error.

[dwheeler]

I think that's very likely, but I've never seen a post mortum from Apple where they track down what happened.

I wish they would be more open about what happened. Mistakes happen. It's better for the industry if we can all learn from them.

[pansa2]

The OP has re-used the title of an unrelated article posted a few days ago, for some reason:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726068

[gigatexal]

Flagged in hopes the title gets changed