router damaged by cracker?

If we assume that the router mentioned in the following cracking incident is a popular model we all use: what other than zapping the FlashROM could this attacker have done? We all know that <big popular vendor>'s firmware source code has hit the pirate BBS's a year or two back : could someone have compiled a rogue image that can actually fry some router components (I can think of plenty of nasty things with serial ports transmitting too fast for their own good - and burn the driver chips) ? http://www.denverpost.com/business/biz1012d.htm