SSH'd into it with the help of somebody who had the same issue. passworded root and baikal. hopefully they won't be able to get in. other wise the next step is just COMPLETELY disabling SSH login
If I had access to a system, and I wanted to have control of it, I would have put other measures in place to maintain access. At the very least, I'd put a regular cron job (and/or start up script) that would restore my miner settings over yours. That way, I'd probably still get a few coins after you thought you had everything fixed by changing the pw...
In short: If I were you, I'd side with starting from a fresh SD card image to be 100% sure.
it is on a a reflashed SD card.
the unknown pool STILL showed up but it seems he lost the power to actually make my miner mine on it and change preferences.