Cisco source stolen!

From: p2pnet.net...

Why is this in the war on terror forum? Because what better way to take down the western world then to destroy the internet?

Cisco controls most of the routers, servers, and switches in the world, and they're the first line of defense for the internet. However, 800MB of code was stolen from them, and unlike a typical hacker, mum is the word on this on.

A few months ago the same thing happened at Microsoft, and the source was on P2P networks within days. This time, a 2.5 megabyte snippet was sent to a russian website, and nothing more. Very unlike a hacker.

If, however, a terror network were to get that code, they would have full access to all of the internet if they were to find workarounds. In the 2.5 meg snippet a major security hole was discovered, so who knows what else may be available. This theft could destroy the world economy....

The thing is the code wasnt released yet, so any potential holes found in the code may not be possible yet provided they werent already existing in the code before the new version. Not everyone shares their info, so this still could be a hack job and not some plot for terrorism. There is a group called 'el8' who advocated not sharing code, not creating patches, and basically that everyone sat on their knoweldge and didnt share, at least from the point of view of helping with computer security. Also given the fact that the authors of Sasser and Fatbot/Agobot have been caught, the person(s) who swiped the code could be afraid of risking getting caught.

What I would like to know is how the code was stolen. It seems the last few incidents of stolen code (MS, Valve) have been due to less than ideal security practices or just being outright lazy. I really hope this wasnt the case with Cisco.

It's believed someone may have just broken into the corporate office, but since the person's not talking about it, there's very little info on how it was done.

I have 3 theories on this, either it was corporate espionage (but why release the little snippit), a hacker (if they're going to make it known by sending one site the info, they're not too worried about getting caught), or a terror cell.

I work in software, and even if something's not released, when you're doing an upgrade, you don't just scrap all the old code. Plus, when there's a hole in the upgrade, it was probably also in the older version.

It definately will be interesting to see how things shape up, especially since there seems to be alot more high-level code theft this year, or perhaps its just getting more coverage. My money is on it being an inside job by a disgruntled employee, but only time will tell on that.