A scramble at Cisco exposes uncomfortable truths about U.S. cyber defense | Reuters
| SAN FRANCISCO
When
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed earlier this month that his
anti-secrecy group had obtained CIA tools for hacking into technology
products made by U.S. companies, security engineers at Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) swung into action. The
Wikileaks documents described how the Central Intelligence Agency had
learned more than a year ago how to exploit flaws in Cisco's widely used
Internet switches, which direct electronic traffic, to enable
eavesdropping.
Senior Cisco
managers immediately reassigned staff from other projects to figure out
how the CIA hacking tricks worked, so they could help customers patch
their systems and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using the same
methods, three employees told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The
Cisco engineers worked around the clock for days to analyze the means
of attack, create fixes, and craft a stopgap warning about a security
risk affecting more than 300 different products, said the employees, who
had direct knowledge of the effort.
| SAN FRANCISCO
The logo of Cisco is seen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
