Swedish teen arrested in connection with Cisco code theft

By Steve Malone

Posted on 11 May 2005 at 11:53

The FBI has announced that the Swedish authorities have arrested a teenager in connection with the alleged theft of Cisco source code in May of last year.

The Bureau says it is continuing to work with law enforcement agencies, including those in Britain, to determine whether the teenager worked alone or with accomplices.

Just under a year ago, a Russian security website reported that portions of Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) had appeared on an IRC channel. The code portions were from versions 12.3 and 12.3t of the OS.

The Cisco code is particularly important as most of the world's internet switching is performed by Cisco hardware. A breach in security could, in theory, cause huge damage to some of the world's most critical networks.

The person, who styled themself Stakkato, posted the 2.5Mb portion of code to prove their claim that they had hacked into Cisco's own network, something the networking giant denied at the time. However, the code soon disappeared from view although it now appears that by then it had already fallen into the wrong hands.

The New York Times is reporting that the stolen code has been used by hackers to mount a number of attacks on US government sites including supposedly high-security networks such as NASA and a US missile base, although the authorities there say that only weather forecasting data was obtained.

However, it seems that law enforcement has now caught up with the hackers. The FBI says that 'the criminal activity has stopped'. However, there is no certainty that other breaches based on the stolen code will not appear in the future.