[1] : The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

back door \back" door"\
   a door in the back part of a building; hence, an indirect
   way. --atterbury.
   1913 webster

[2] : WordNet (r) 2.0

back door
     n 1: a secret or underhand means of access to a place or a
          position; "he got his job through the back door"
     2: an entrance at the rear of a building syn: back entrance
see also:
back entrance 

[3] : Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0

105 moby thesaurus words for "back door":
   french door, afterpart, afterpiece, archway, back, back road,
   back seat, back side, back stairs, back street, back way,
   backstairs, barway, behind, bolt-hole, breech, bulkhead, by-lane,
   bypass, bypath, byroad, bystreet, byway, carriage entrance,
   cellar door, cellarway, clandestine, covert, covert way, detour,
   door, doorjamb, doorpost, doorway, escalier derobe, escape hatch,
   escape route, feline, front door, furtive, gate, gatepost, gateway,
   hatch, hatchway, heel, hidlings, hind end, hind part, hindhead,
   hole-and-corner, hugger-mugger, lintel, occiput, porch, portal,
   porte cochere, posterior, postern, privy, propylaeum, pylon, quiet,
   rear, rear end, rearward, reverse, roundabout way, scuttle,
   secret exit, secret passage, secret staircase, shifty, side door,
   side road, side street, skulking, slinking, slinky, sly, sneaking,
   sneaky, stealthy, stern, stile, storm door, surreptitious, tail,
   tail end, tailpiece, threshold, tollgate, trap, trap door,
   turnpike, turnstile, under-the-counter, under-the-table,
   undercover, underground, underground railroad, underground route,
   underhand, underhanded, unobtrusive

[4] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

back door n. common a hole in the security of a system deliberately
   left in place by designers or maintainers. the motivation for such holes
   is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of
   the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service
   technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. syn. trap door;
   may also be called a `wormhole'. see also iron box, cracker, worm,
   logic bomb.

   historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than
   anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. ken
   thompson's 1983 turing award lecture to the acm admitted the existence
   of a back door in early unix versions that may have qualified as the
   most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. in this scheme, the c
   compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command
   was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen
   by thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account
   had been created for him.

   normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the
   source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. but to
   recompile the compiler, you have to _use_ the compiler -- so thompson
   also arranged that the compiler would _recognize when it was compiling a
   version of itself_, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to
   insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow thompson entry --
   and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing
   again the next time around and having done this once, he was then able
   to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack
   perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active
   but with no trace in the sources.

   the turing lecture that suggested this truly moby hack was later
   published as "reflections on trusting trust", "communications of the acm
   27", 8 august 1984, pp. 761-763 text available at
   `http://www.acm.org/classics'. ken thompson has since confirmed that
   this hack was implemented and that the trojan horse code did appear in
   the login binary of a unix support group machine. ken says the crocked
   compiler was never distributed. your editor has heard two separate
   reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out of bell
   labs, notably to bbn, and that it enabled at least one late-night login
   across the network by someone using the login name `kt'.


see also:
trap door iron box cracker worm logic bomb 

[5] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

back door
     
         or "trap door", "wormhole".  a hole in the
        security of a system deliberately left in place by designers
        or maintainers.  the motivation for such holes is not always
        sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of
        the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field
        service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers.
        see also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb.
     
        historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer
        than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely
        known.  the infamous rtm worm of late 1988, for example,
        used a back door in the bsd unix "sendmail8" utility.
     
        ken thompson's 1983 turing award lecture to the acm
        revealed the existence of a back door in early unix versions
        that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security
        hack of all time.  the c compiler contained code that would
        recognise when the "login" command was being recompiled and
        insert some code recognizing a password chosen by thompson,
        giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had
        been created for him.
     
        normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from
        the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler.
        but to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler
        - so thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognise
        when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into
        the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled
        "login" the code to allow thompson entry - and, of course, the
        code to recognise itself and do the whole thing again the next
        time around  and having done this once, he was then able to
        recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack
        perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place
        and active but with no trace in the sources.
     
        the talk that revealed this truly moby hack was published as
        "reflections on trusting trust", "communications of the acm
        27", 8 august 1984, pp. 761--763.
     
        jargon file
     
        1995-04-25
     
     
see also:
trap door wormhole operating system iron box cracker worm 
logic bomb rtm bsd ken thompson acm 
unix jargon file 

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