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I think if you were smart enough, you may be able to mask some needed changes under some legitimate tickets. You make certain changes that you know will break stuff, but you assign a reviewer who doesn't know enough about the particular thing that they may think it seems fine.

I am talking in a very generalized sense, not for this particular issue. But I don't think the code review/deployment process is entirely safe against internal bad actors.

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See: The Underhanded C Contest.

http://underhanded-c.org/

The whole point is to write C that appears on the level at first, but actually has a subtle exploitable flaw. The flaw is supposed to appear like a simple mistake for plausible deniability. Some of the winning responses are very devious.

Code reviews can potentially catch bugs and prevent an obvious inside attack but are mostly to keep the code-base healthy and consistent over time. Something that can take down multiple revenue streams for all customers should have some other check besides a peer code review.

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