On Jan 6, 2010, at 6:24 PM, Jeffrey I. Schiller wrote:
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An option I saw years ago (I forgot on whose equipment) was a default password which was a function of the equipment's serial number. So you had to have the algorithm and you needed the serial number which was not related to the MAC. So if you didn't have physical access, you were not in a good position to learn the password.
I suspect this was a support nightmare for the vendor and I bet they went to a more standard (read: the same) factory password.
At the end of the day, minimizing support costs for the vendor (not to mention likely annoyance for the customer) trumps providing "default" security for the folks who won't change the default password.
The MyFi apparently does this. According to http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/technology/personaltech/07pogue.html "The network password is printed right there on the bottom of the MiFi itself." --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb