To defend against outside intruders, commercial switches of this type are password-protected, just like every corporate computer network. Any good social engineer with a phone-phreaking background knows that Nortel switches provide a default account name for software updates: NTAS (the abbreviation for Nortel Technical Assistance Support; not very subtle). But what about a password? Eric dialed in several times, each time trying one of the obvious and commonly used choices. Entering the same as the account name, NTAS, didn't work. Neither did "helper." Nor did "patch."