Cisco targeted by hackers
Date: August 07, 2005Source: Computer Crime Research Center
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Hackers have taken aim at Cisco's website by exploiting a vulnerability that could expose users' passwords.
Cisco spokeswoman Mojgan Khalili declined to comment on whether any data or passwords of employees, customers and other registered users had been compromised by the vulnerability, which came to Cisco's attention on Monday through a third party security research group.
"Cisco patched the vulnerability and immediately corrected the problem," Ms Khalili said.
She said it was unclear how long the vulnerability was exposed before the research group discovered it.
The website vulnerability comes about a week after Cisco drew the ire of many hackers by trying to block a presentation revealing a flaw in its routers, which direct around 60 per cent of internet traffic.
Security researcher Michael Lynn first described the router flaw and details on how to exploit it last Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, despite the objections of Cisco and his former employer, Internet Security Systems.
The two companies won a court order barring Mr Lynn and the Black Hat group from further disseminating details of the router flaw, which could potentially allow the theft of different kinds of data.
The Cisco website security breach is not related to the router flaw detailed at the Black Hat conference.
Ms Khalili said Cisco was "not aware of any active exploits" of its routers, though that has not stopped hackers from attempting to expose the router flaw.
Some hackers have said in interviews and on blogs that they wanted to illustrate the need for Cisco customers to update their software to defend against malicious attacks.
Security consultant Rick Forno of the website infowarrior.org said he thought the breach of Cisco's website could be a protest over last week's news.
"I wouldn't rule it out that it's to protest last week. It could also be coincidental," said Mr Forno, who last week removed a file containing Lynn's presentation off the infowarrior.org site after receiving a "cease-and-desist" order from Internet Security System lawyers.
Security expert Joseph Klein, however, said many other companies' websites have the same flaw as Cisco's site and said the flaw was a topic of discussion at the Black Hat conference last week.
Cisco is conducting its own investigation into the website security breach and notified the US attorney's office about the incident.
In a statement on the security breach Cisco said it was also resetting registered users' passwords.
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