[afnog] Cisco Source Code Reportedly Stolen

[Brian Longwe]

On 24 May 2005, at 10:47, Phil Regnauld wrote:

> On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 10:16:28PM +0300, Brian Longwe wrote:
>
>> This is really scary!
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>> Cisco Source Code Reportedly Stolen
>> By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
>> May 18, 2004
>>
>
>     And a year old! :)  They arrested some of the people recently.
>

Yes - last week....

Cisco Says Swede Detained for 2004 Hacking Incident
By  Reuters
May 10, 2005

WASHINGTON/STOCKHOLM (Reuters)— Cisco Systems Inc. said on Tuesday  
authorities in Sweden had detained a person for stealing its source  
code, the basic instructions for the machines that direct Internet  
traffic around the globe.

"We are aware that a person has been detained in Sweden related to  
the IOS source code theft and are encouraged by this action," the San  
Jose, California, company said in a statement.

Swedish police have declined to say whether their investigation of a  
16-year-old boy is related to a May 2004 incident that exposed the  
inner workings of Cisco's Internetworking Operating System, or IOS.

Police in Uppsala, a university town north of Stockholm, said on  
Tuesday they had been contacted by the Federal Bureau of  
Investigation about a teenager already in trouble with the law in  
Sweden for allegedly hacking into university computers.

Swedish police said the teenager, whom they would not identify by  
name, had been questioned about hacker attacks on Uppsala University  
computers, but had not been arrested.

"We have not received any formal request from (U.S. authorities) to  
question or apprehend the 16-year-old," Uppsala police spokesman  
Christer Nordstrom said. "But I can confirm that there has been an  
exchange of information with the FBI."

The New York Times reported that the Cisco theft was part of a  
broader hacking campaign that targeted computer systems run by U.S.  
universities and government agencies.

Several supercomputer labs in April 2004 reported that computers  
connected to the high-speed TeraGrid network had been breached.

A spokeswoman for the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico  
confirmed that the facility had experienced an intrusion around the  
time that Cisco reported its breach, but said no sensitive  
information was obtained.

"Basically, they got into some local weather forecasts," spokeswoman  
Monte Marlin said.

Source code, the underlying blueprint of computer software,  
determines how programs work. Companies like Microsoft Corp.  
zealously guard their source code because they consider it the  
lifeblood of their business.

Cisco said last May that portions of its IOS source code had been  
copied from its internal systems and posted on a foreign Web site for  
several days, where presumably other hackers could examine it closely  
for security flaws. The company said at the time that the breach  
would not put customers' equipment at risk.

The FBI said in a statement it had been working with authorities in  
Sweden and Great Britain to track down the culprit. "As a result of  
recent actions, the criminal activity appears to have stopped," it said.

Authorities in Great Britain arrested a 20-year-old man last  
September in connection with the Cisco hacking, but no charges have  
been filed.

(Additional reporting by Reuters Stockholm bureau)


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