While this backdoor had it's good intentions from customer service standpoint but poorly designed. The backdoor should be unique to each device. Backdoor should ask for a password such as the device's serial number and few digits of the MAC address. Also add a deny timer if hacking of the backdoor is in progress.
Easy to implement. Ah well, least they took it out entirely.
I always had the thought that the modems could potentially have backdoors. Anyone looking at those?
There's many reasons for thinking so, including the fact that Comcast keeps bugging me to replace the one I have that works perfectly. It has VoIP built in, and they keep messaging me that the battery is dead, and the whole unit needs replacing. lol. Now, I'm not a serious conspiracy theorist. I do enjoy them for their entertainment value. I'm also not the type to believe that I'm so important that someone somewhere really cares about what I'm doing on the internet. I do love a good story though.
You think for the sake of troubleshooting you could add a physical switch or jumper the user can use to put the router into a troubleshooting mode. I hate the fact that AT&T's new modems can see every device hooked up to there uVerse modems. There are so many 'backdoors' technicians have now a days that do very little in terms of end user support but could give a potential hacker more information they may need to intrude on your network.