The Internet is awash with speculation following allegations that the IPSEC cryptographic stack in OpenBSD was furnished with a backdoor at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The allegations were made by Gregory Perry in an e-mail to one of the founders of NetBSD - Theo De Raadt – and were published on the BSD mailing lists so that a code audit can be undertaken by those with an interest in doing so.

If such a backdoor does exist, it could allow the FBI (and conceviably others) to decrypt communications between servers, whether those communications take place over a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or over a Secure Shell Connection (SSH).

This whitepaper will examine the precedents for this allegation as well as the potential impact that such a revelation could have on businesses around the world.