In most cases it wasn't even PHPMyAdmin's fault per se, but the people not taking 5 minutes to harden it or upgrade it. In many cases, no offence to the makers of this tool, finding a phpmyadmin instance (especially not up-to-date) was a tell tale sign of trouble ahead. Phpmyadmin has caused trouble for people you can't even begin to imagine (ok you probably can). Oh the memories.