Ummm... if you are an AT&T customer, then your homeportal would have prompted you to create an admin password when it first was setup and configured. It's part of the setup routine and can't be skipped. If the password was set to "admin" or "password" then someone chose that for ease of use, perhaps it was installed by a lazy DSL install technician. All 2wire wireless routers that have ever shipped (something north of 6 million) have shipped with at least 64-bit WEP as default encryption based on that random 10-digit number. it's not perfect, but it's still 100% more encryption than you'd get with most big-box purchased standalone routers. I use WPA, but even plain WEP is nice when there are four or five available unencrypted access points visible in my neighborhood, which isn't even that dense with housing (typical suburbia).