Backdoor Account Found On Devices Used By White House, US Military (sec-consult.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A hidden backdoor account was discovered embedded in the firmware of devices deployed at the White House and in various US Military strategic centers, more precisely in AMX conference room equipment. The first account was named Black Widow, and after security researchers reported its presence to AMX, the company's employees simply renamed it to Batman thinking nobody will notice. AMX did remove the backdoor after three months. In its firmware's official release notes, AMX claimed that the two accounts were only used for debugging, just like Fortinet claimed that its FortiOS SSH backdoor was used only internally by a management protocol.

Comments

Front door

[awkScooby]

Nothing to see here. This was a "front door," not a "back door."

Governent and backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the government *wants* back doors in everything.

I'm confused now... Why would they have them removed?

Re: Just What the Government Wants - Backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

Who monitors the monitors? Do the backdoors have little backdoors in them? Is it backdoors all the way down? Backdoorception?

New method of preserving secrecy needed....

[Sqreater]

We could call it, perhaps, "The Cone of Silence."

Re:New method of preserving secrecy needed....

[Anonymous Coward]

We could call it, perhaps, "The Cone of Silence."

What?

Re: Just What the Government Wants - Backdoors

[Locke2005]

There have been many, many movies about backdoors... you've just been visiting the wrong DVD store!