Can confirm that this kind of software is terrible. I've worked in SATCOM for years, we've deployed modems to military that have hardcoded passwords for web UI

Can confirm that this kind of software is terrible. I've worked in SATCOM for years, we've deployed modems to military that have hardcoded passwords for web UI and SSH that you can google on the internet... Obviously some effort goes into firewalling all that off very carefully, and then often separate VPN over the top (hardware crypto, etc.), but the modems themselves are appalling. The SSH host keys also change when you do a firmware upgrade which makes me think that might be hardcoded and just changed in each version, not generated for each device... I haven't checked though. Unfortunately that was the modem that the satellite operator required us to use, there was no other option!