NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden attended the Free Software Foundation LibrePlanet 2016 conference remotely from Russia to discuss the advantages of free applications, explaining that he couldn’t trust Microsoft software when revealing government’s surveillance programs in 2013.



Snowden pointed out that his only fear regarding Microsoft software was that a backdoor was installed by the company in its software, so he instead preferred to turn to free solutions to blow the whistle about the NSA. To be clear, Snowden emphasized that he never knew whether there are any backdoors in Microsoft products, only that he was afraid to use them for such an important thing.
“I didn’t use Microsoft machines when I was in my operational phase, because I couldn’t trust them. Not because I knew that there was a particular back door or anything like that, but because I couldn’t be sure,” he was quoted as saying by ITProPortal.
Security patches ASAP He went on to praise the security of software currently in use, explaining that it’s critical for developers to patch vulnerabilities as quickly as possible.
“It’s not just a question of stable. Stable is important but increasingly, due to the pace of adversary offensive research [being] so fast, if our update cycles are not at least relevant to the attack speed, then we’re actually endangering people,” he said.
This isn’t the first time when the issue of backdoors in Microsoft products is brought to light, as in the past there were several claims that the company could use its operating system to help the US spy on users.
Back in 2013, for example, the German government has been advised by local agencies to avoid using Windows 8 on official computers because of the risks of backdoors, with Windows 7 said to be a much safer alternative. China also made a similar decision, banning Windows 8 on government computers amid claims that Microsoft could spy on local officials and steal state secrets.