Cisco investigates source code leak

An unspecified amount of the proprietary source code that drives Cisco Systems' networking hardware has appeared on the Internet, the technology giant acknowledged early Monday. A representative could not confirm, however, that network intruders made off with 800MB of code, as reported by a Russian security group over the weekend. "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," said Jim Brady, a spokesman for the company. "The Cisco information security team is looking into this matter and investigating what happened."

Brady could give no further details on the matter.

This is the second time this year that a major technology company's product source code has been made public without authorization. In February, source code for parts of Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Windows NT were leaked to the Internet. One security researcher claimed that he had discovered a minor Internet Explorer flaw by analyzing that source code.

Read Full Story