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Microsoft Lets EU Governments Inspect Source Code For Security Issues
itwbennett writes: Microsoft has agreed to let European governments review the source code of its products to ensure that they don't contain security backdoors, at a transparency center in Brussels. The second of its kind, the new center follows on the heels of the first, built last June in Redmond, Washington. Part of Microsoft's Government Security Program, the company hopes the centers will create trust with governments that want to use Microsoft products. "Today's opening in Brussels will give governments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa a convenient location to experience our commitment to transparency and delivering products and services that are secure by principle and by design," said Matt Thomlinson, Vice President of Microsoft Security.
Nope. They have to consult the code on dedicated workstations and it is forbidden to bring in a laptop or mobile phone.
Source: Belgian public television website (in Dutch)
Just to add a very specific note on the Visual C++ compiler: it uses multi-threading to compile. That is, one thread per CPU core, each thread is parsing a separate C/C++ source file from the tree. In this scenario, there is zero guarantee that each thread completes in a consistent order on a single machine, let along across different machines with different thread counts and architectures.
Also, good luck finding the back doors if they were written by contestants in the underhanded code contest.