Swedish hacker indicted for Cisco attack

Cisco's servers were hacked into in May 2004

A 21-year old Swedish hacker has been indicted (PDF) on charges of stealing source code from networking firm Cisco.

Philip Gabriel Pettersson, aka 'Stakkato', is accused of breaking into Cisco's servers between 12 and 13 May 2004, and stealing the source code for the firm's Internetwork Operating System (IOS). He was 16 at the time of the attacks.

Pettersson allegedly posted 2.5MB of the 800MB of IOS code on an IRC channel to prove that he had successfully completed the hack, according to reports. It is not known whether he used the software to find vulnerabilities in Cisco's products.

"Cisco reported that it did not believe that any customer information, partner information or financial systems were affected," according to the indictment.

Pettersson is also charged with breaking into Nasa servers in May and October 2004, in particular the Ames Research Center. It is not known whether anything was stolen in that attack.

Two years ago Pettersson ran foul of the Swedish authorities and was fined $25,000 for breaking into the networks of three local universities.

He is unlikely to be troubled by the current indictments, since Sweden does not allow extradition of its citizens. The US Department of Justice has said that it will work with the Swedish authorities on the case.