I'm a broken record about this by now, but stories like these keep reminding me how broken the law is for ethical hackers in Germany. If an ethical hacker found something like this in Germany, it would from my knowledge not be clear if entering an empty password counts as "circumventing or breaking a security barrier". "No password barrier" has recently been clarified in courts, but "Static Password" hasn't. And once…
Hard-coded, publicly available credentials are criminal to circumvent in germany. See https://www.heise.de/en/news/Modern-Solution-Court-of-Appeal... which is now settled, since the appeal was rejected. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Federal-Constitutional-Court-re... > At the end of the trial, however, this had little impact on the verdict. The presiding judge stated for the record that the mere fact that the [publicl…
> Der Vorsitzende Richter gab zu Protokoll, dass alleine die Tatsache, dass die Software ein Passwort für die Verbindung gesetzt habe, bedeute, dass ein Blick in die Rohdaten des Programms und eine anschließende Datenbankverbindung zu Modern Solution den Straftatbestand des Hackerparagrafen erfülle
> The Judge gave to protocol that just the fact that the software requires a password for the connection, implies that a look at the raw data of the program and a subsequent database connection is considered hacking.
So yes, entering an empty password can cause all of your electronic devices in all your registered residences to be seized as evidence.
Note that the decompilation is on the complexity level of "strings $binary".