It just seems like a poorly written article. Later on it says<p>&gt; <i>Such a situation could cause a problem in any size datacenter, where these switches and cables are commonly used</i><p>which seems to contradict the &quot;accidentally&quot;. Similarly, this bit is ungrammatical:<p>&gt; <i>It’s amazing that Cisco didn’t catch this before the device was released, let alone that the ‘fix’ for the problem which suggests using a different cable or cutting off the boot.</i>