On this point I'm inclined to agree with Schneier: why inject backdoors into things, leaving fingerprints and betraying both opsec and tradecraft, when you can just sit back and watch the software companies build the backdoors for you? NSA has as much as come out and said this at keynote speeches already, but it seems pretty obvious from my vantage point.
[...]
Some of the suspicions about hidden weaknesses in the S-boxes were allayed in 1990, with the independent discovery and open publication by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir of differential cryptanalysis, a general method for breaking block ciphers. The S-boxes of DES were much more resistant to the attack than if they had been chosen at random, strongly suggesting that IBM knew about the technique back in the 1970s.
I'm done bickering about trivia, though. If you'd like the last word, as long as you don't say anything overtly stupid, I'm not going to respond. Happy holidays!