Backdoor found in Linksys, Netgear Routers
About a year ago I left a cable modem and internet service (Time Warner) at an apartment I was moving out of while my friend continued to stay there.  I had configured the thing in a manner I thought to be fairly secure -- strong password, no broadcast, etc.. One day the internet goes down and my friend doesn't know what to do.  She calls the ISP and asks them what's wrong.  They say they can't release any information about the service to her without my permission, so I suddenly get a three-way call explaining that my friend and the ISP representative are on the line and I need to give my authorization to access the account information.  Being the person I am, I attempt to troubleshoot things over the phone before giving out any sort of account credentials.  Eventually, I ask her to log into the router configuration page.  She doesn't know the password and the first one I gave her doesn't work.  The representative chimes in "That's fine -- I can just change it from here."<p>"...What?"<p>I was furious.  Time Warner had left a backdoor in all their modems that gives them administrative access to my private connection.  And yes -- she did alter the password remotely.  She didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with this.  I tried googling for relevant information, but wasn't able to find anything more than speculation at the time.