May 18, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Cisco (cisco.com) said on Monday that it is currently investigating the possibility that source code powering its networking equipment was stolen, according to a report by Reuters.
A spokesperson for Cisco declined to tell Reuters whether or how much code might have been stolen. The company did say in a statement that it was aware some of its proprietary information might have been compromised and that it was investigating the matter.
According to a report in LightReading.com, 800MB of source code was stolen from Cisco’s corporate Web site and leaked onto the Internet.
Numerous versions of Cisco’s operating system exist. As a result, a theft would not affect all its networking gear. However, many observers believe the theft could cause problems depending on what code was stolen and how it was written. It is still unclear exactly what parts of the source code, if any, were stolen.
