Be responded by first accusing Karunaratne of hacking its internal network, and then booting him off the service. It released a firmware update in March which tightened up the access control list for the telnet service ports.

However, it's emerged that whenever the router is reset to factory settings - which Be recommends as part of the procedure for switching from a dynamic to a static IP, for example - the configuration is refreshed with the original access control list, leaving it wide open once again. Customers sometimes restore factory settings when the router crashes too.

BE: "Access is restricted to specific IP addresses. This is managed through new firmware we released in March 2007. All new members that have joined since then have received Be Boxes with the updated firmware on. For all members that joined prior to that Be runs a script multiple times a day to update members firmware with the relevant patch."