You are correct on how the grinding and exploring the search space happens, just the smoking gun is in the code not on the blockchain.

The way the alarm would be set is by wallets getting drained, as it would make people think, hmm maybe there is a vulnerability and I can exploit it too, let me check the code.

bitcoin

There is not 1 single compelling evidence that this was a backdoor.

raw_avocado

You are correct on how the grinding and exploring the search space happens, just the smoking gun is in the code not on the blockchain.

The way the alarm would be set is by wallets getting drained, as it would make people think, hmm maybe there is a vulnerability and I can exploit it too, let me check the code.