British police arrest 'Cisco kid'

Code nicker suspect nicked

By Nick Farrell

Mon Sep 20 2004, 08:26

INSPECTOR Hacker of the Yard has fingered the collar of a UK man suspected of stealing source code from Cisco Systems in May.

Cyber plods from the Metropolitan Police Computer Crime Unit swooped on houses in Manchester and Derbyshire and carried off some computers for some rigorous probing.

A 20 year-old-man has not been charged yet, but is likely to be accused of "hacking offenses" under the Computer Misuse Act, Scotland Yard said.

Part of the Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) source code was posted on a Russian security site SecurityLab.ru, owned by information protection specialist Positive Technologies, on May 15, two days after its administrators received the leaked source code.

A person with the alias "Franz" bragged about the intrusion and posted about 2.5MB of code on the Internet relay chat system, not long after the break-in.

It is not clear if the Brit arrested is the mysterious Franz or how he was connected with Cisco. At one point the FBI thought that the Cisco theft was an inside job. µ