Cisco investigating stolen software code

Tuesday, May 18th 2004, 6:16 am

By: News On 6

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) _ Cisco Systems Inc. is investigating how the code for some of its software that runs much of the networking equipment on the Internet was published on a Web site.

A Russian electronic security Web site published some of the 800 megabytes of software code it said was allegedly stolen by an unidentified hacker, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reported on their Web sites early Tuesday.

``Cisco is aware that a potential compromise of its proprietary information occurred and was reported on a public Web site just prior to the weekend,'' the company said in a statement late Monday. ``Cisco is fully investigating what happened.''

It was not immediately clear whether the theft would lead to any security problems. San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco is the world's leading maker of network routers and switches, the nuts and bolts that serve as the Internet's global electronic backbone.

The software breach is the second time this year a prominent technology company has faced an embarrassing disclosure of its source code. In February, some pieces of Microsoft Corp.'s tightly guarded blueprints for Windows 2000 and Windows NT were circulating on the Internet.