Hardcoded Password Found in Cisco Enterprise Software, Again (bleepingcomputer.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Cisco released 16 security advisories yesterday, including alerts for three vulnerabilities rated "Critical" and which received a maximum of 10 out of 10 on the CVSSv3 severity score. The three vulnerabilities include a backdoor account and two bypasses of the authentication system for Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Center. The Cisco DNA Center is a piece of software that's aimed at enterprise clients and which provides a central system for designing and deploying device configurations (aka provisioning) across a large network. This is, arguably, a pretty complex piece of software, and according to Cisco, a recent internal audit has yielded some pretty bad results.

Comments

Irrefutable facts.

[Narcocide]

These passwords were either left there purposefully or accidentally. If they were left there purposefully it may have been done either with or without Cisco's knowledge.

There is no combination of available possibilities that can be justified by acceptable behavior from a network security hardware vendor of this stature. Either they are effectively completely incompetent or they're effectively completely malicious.