Swedish hacker in Cisco attack
p2pnet.net News:- A 16-year-old Swedish hacker is the focus of investigations in Europe and the US centering on attacks on the US military, NASA, research laboratories and IT companies, including Cisco.
“The incident seemed alarming enough,” says the New York Times, “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.
“Now federal officials and computer security investigators have acknowledged that the Cisco break-in last year was only part of a more extensive operation – involving a single intruder or a small band, apparently based in Europe – in which thousands of computer systems were similarly penetrated.”
US investigators traced the intrusions to the Uppsala university network, says the NYT, and in March the youth, from Uppsala, was charged with hacking the university systems.
Security holes in exploited systems have been patched, says the story, continuing, “and beyond the Cisco theft, it is not clear how much data was taken or destroyed. Still, the case illustrates the ease with which Internet-connected computers – even those of sophisticated corporate and government networks – can be penetrated, and also the difficulty in tracing those responsible.”
The FBI and Swedish police are still working on the case and the teenager was released to his parents’ care, says the NYT, adding:
“Computer experts said the break-ins did not represent a fundamentally new kind of attack. Rather, they said, the primary intruder was particularly clever in the way he organized a system for automating the theft of computer log-ins and passwords, conducting attacks through a complicated maze of computers connected to the Internet in as many as seven countries.”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
New York Times – Internet Attack Called Broad and Long Lasting by Investigators, May 10, 2005
