April 28, Ars Technica (International) Backdoor that threatens power stations to be purged from control system. Mission-critical routers used to control electric substations and other critical infrastructure are being updated to remove a previously undocumented backdoor that could allow vandals to hijack the devices, manufacturer RuggedCom said April 27. The announcement by the Ontario, Canada-based company comes 2 days after Ars Technica reported the company¹s entire line of devices running its Rugged Operating System contained a backdoor with an easily determined password. The backdoor, which cannot be disabled, had not been publicly acknowledged by the company until now, leaving the power utilities, military facilities, and municipal traffic departments using the industrial-strength gear vulnerable to sabotage that could affect the safety of huge populations of people.