>> Surely they don't need backdoors when they can just exploit the awful network security that American networking equipment vendors already come with out of the box?

For Cisco they literally keep doing it year after year. They are like the Boeing of the IT world. Its unbelievable how they are still in business and growing...and then people worry about Mythos… :-))

Even Bruce Schneier said that Cisco products have had hard-coded passwords made public repeatedly, and "you'd think it would learn.": https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/10/cisco-cant-st...

Cisco your core vendor...this is way the CEO earns the big bucks...

2010 (CVE-2010-1574): Cisco IE3000 switches shipped with hard-coded SNMP community names public and private.

2017 (CVE-2017-3834): Cisco Aironet 1830/1850 Mobility Express had default credentials that could let an unauthenticated remote attacker take control of the device.

2017 (CVE-2017-6689): Cisco Elastic Services Controller had a default weak hard-coded password for the admin user in the ConfD CLI.

2017 (CVE-2017-12317): Cisco AMP for Endpoints used a static key to protect the connector password

2018 (CVE-2018-0141): Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning 11.6 had a hard-coded SSH account password that could allow local access to the underlying Linux OS.

2018 (CVE-2018-0150): Cisco IOS XE had an undocumented privilege-15 account with a default username and password, allowing unauthenticated remote administrative access.

2018 (CVE-2018-15389): Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning’s install flow could leave a default hard-coded web admin username/password in place.

2019 (Cisco advisory; credential issue documented in the advisory): Cisco Small Business RV160/RV260/RV340 firmware images were found to contain undocumented accounts and hardcoded password hashes

2021 (CVE-2021-34795): Cisco Catalyst PON ONT devices had a default Telnet credential vulnerability when Telnet was enabled.

2021 (CVE-2021-34757 / CVE-2021-34744): Cisco Business 220 Smart Switches had a static-password issue and a static-key issue

2023 (CVE-2023-20101): Cisco Emergency Responder shipped with static root credentials that could not be changed or deleted, enabling unauthenticated remote login.

2024 (CVE-2024-20412): Cisco Firepower Threat Defense for Firepower 1000/2100/3100/4200 had static accounts with hard-coded passwords

And Juniper? And Fortinet ? Yeap...Our CEOs earn big bucks too...

- Juniper

2015 (CVE-2015-7755 / CVE-2015-7756): Juniper disclosed unauthorized code in ScreenOS that enabled unauthorized remote administrative access and, separately, VPN traffic decryption on affected versions.

2017 (CVE-2017-2343): Juniper SRX Integrated UserFW had hardcoded credentials in its authentication API.

2019 (CVE-2019-0020): Juniper ATP shipped with hard-coded credentials in the Web Collector instance.

2019 (CVE-2019-0030): Juniper ATP used DES with a hardcoded salt for password hashing

- Fortinet

2016 (CVE-2016-1909): FortiOS, FortiAnalyzer, FortiSwitch, and FortiCache had an undocumented Fortimanager_Access account with a hardcoded SSH passphrase.

2019 (CVE-2019-6698): FortiRecorder set a hardcoded admin password on managed FortiCameras.

2019 (CVE-2019-6693): FortiOS / FortiManager / FortiAnalyzer used a hard-coded cryptographic key for sensitive config data

2020 (CVE-2019-16153): FortiSIEM had hard-coded PostgreSQL credentials in its database component.

Cisco continuously blows my mind.

Did you mean to include the Juniper CVE's? In my experience, all vendors are constantly remediating CVE's. I wonder if Cisco has the most vulnerabilities discovered because they also have the most users, largest product offering, highest inventory, etc?

I've had a hell of a time patching Palo Alto's and Fortigates, too. Critical CVEs, day-one RCE attacks. It seems more profitable to rush out new code / new products, and just address vulns as they appear, rather than spending extra development time hardening the software.