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More on Last Year's Cisco Source Code Theft
grazzy writes "The New York Times has a story about last year's theft of Cisco source code:
The incident seemed alarming enough: a breach of a Cisco Systems network in which an intruder seized programming instructions for many of the computers that control the flow of the Internet. "
I'm without a doubt no networking expert, so I'd like to ask one of you who is: if the source code for cisco's equipment is leaked, would that person have the ability to create some kind of virus/malware that could bring the internet to a screaching halt? What can they do, infect routers with viruses now? I guess I'm unclear on the real dangers in a situation like this.
Rather good timing that last night on "24" we see Cisco's name all over the screen's at the CTU command center and the actress works in the line "the Cisco network is defending itself" followed immediately by an Alienware laptop on the screen.
/golfclap foxtv
Just in time for major articles about how bad Cisco's security was that they had some source code stolen.
And people wonder why I don't watch television. Sad..just sad.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Why alarming ? The internet is still up and running since that last years theft.
(I guess it should be read last year's)
Sensationnal breaking news !
The programming instructions of Linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD, which run many of big corporations servers, is avalaible to the sight of anybody! That's alarming!
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
On one hand, the article claims that "With such information, sophisticated intruders would potentially be able to compromise security on router computers of Cisco customers running the affected programs" and on the other hand that Cisco itself claims that "the improper publication of this information does not create increased risk to customers' networks". These statements are, IMHO, in direct contradiction of each other. Who the hell should we believe?
...that all the discovered breaches are by inept, pimply-faced teens (regardless of how many times some news article quotes some 'expert' about how 'particularly clever' the idiot was), and that the really serious harm is being done by real pros who never leave a trace.
Scary...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
As a good number of regular slashdot readers are no doubt aware, full source code to Linux, Apache, etc. is available to anyone and they are more secure than their counterparts for this reason. If access to the source code for Cisco routers makes it possible to write a whole bunch of backbone-targeting virii that would really drop my opinion of Cisco routers considerably.
If you actually read the article, the exploit was not big deal either; some guy just distributed a trojan'd SSH client to a bunch of people and collected their passwords and then ran a bunch of rootkits. Nothing to see here.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
You expect these things when someone begins a sentence 'More on'
One of my English profs explained the importance of thinking through sentence structure so as not to be phonetically or grammatically careless, i.e. 'Me and Jim went to the arcade' as it could sound like 'Mean Jim went to the arcade', proper grammar is 'Jim and I went to the arcade.'
Thus endeth today's grammar report.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most amusing part to me is that the title was corrected but it still has "Years" instead of "Year's".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Note that this article was written by the person famous for creating the myth of Kevin Mitnick being a super hacker. Markoff is largely responsible for the fear and paranoia surrounding Mitnick and consequently his unfair prison experience.
His articles were full of lies and exaggerations back then so I would take this article with a grain of salt as well.