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A telnet service responds to a plain port scan. So it was categorically not hidden. Vodaphone explain this themselves in the linked register article:

>It added the Telnet service was found during an audit, which means it can't have been that secret or hidden: "The issues were identified by independent security testing, initiated by Vodafone as part of our routine security measures, and fixed at the time by Huawei.

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So a backdoor is okay incase it's not hidden?

If its not hidden, its not a threat to national security kind of "backdoor". A hidden backdoor will only respond to a secret token, you cant just knock on it and get asked "whats the hardcoded password?"

A vulnerability is not as damning if it wasn't intentionally inserted to be a backdoor. It being easily discoverable suggests that there was no intention to hide it, and thus it was not intended to be a backdoor.

If conversely the vulnerability was difficult to find externally, was publically unknown, and was seen being used for attacks, that would be suggestive of a deliberate backdoor, and far more damning.

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