Surely this hypothetical bribed engineer will be identified during Apple's post-mortem. Hopefully he's a good liar, otherwise the NSA risks exposure that way. Even if he's a terrific liar, of course his reputation will be hurt: His 'mistake' caused Apple a major PR hit and engineering scramble that likely cost millions of dollars.

And for what? The NSA can hide money, but you or I would quickly find ourselves talking with the IRS if our spending or bank accounts rose dramatically without a commensurate rise in reported income. We could probably hide a few thousand dollars a month under the table, but that doesn't sound like it would turn the head of even a particularly amoral Apple engineer already making six figures.

I'm not saying this scenario is impossible. But to be plausible, it requires both the perpetrator and the NSA to take on a degree of risk that doesn't seem to match the reward for either.

If this is standard procedure for the NSA and happens often, given the risk involved, why hasn't anyone been caught at it and publicly exposed?

If the NSA made an exception and executed some unusually elaborate cloak and dagger to seduce or blackmail an Apple employee for this change, why do we think it was for this vulnerability and not the dozens of others that are discovered annually?

Since we're at a nosebleed altitude of hypothetical here, I think now might be the time to point out that this thread is demanding that people prove a negative.