Re: "just as flawed"?
At least a potential attacker would need a valid username and password to access the telnet port*, rather than anyone being able to use the ssh flaw on any affected Cisco once they knew the hard-coded credentials.
* which they could grab unencrypted from the wire if they had access and someone actually logged in over telnet, which is why telnet is bad.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
