Cisco Security Breach

Reports are developing that a security breach of Cisco passwords in 2004 was part of a large, organized, and apparently successful effort to break into thousands of allegedly secure systems.

The effort, probably based in Europe, is being investigated in the U.S. and Europe. Government and private computer systems were breached, and there is no clear information on how much private information and data may have been stolen.

Apparently the people involved explpoited links in Internet-connected computers, and conducted attacks using computers in seven different countries. The hackers apparently were able to install a Trojan horse progam over existing programs. The hackers were then able to get access to passwords to systems, and this grew as the program was shared. At some point, programming instrcutions to Cisco were accessed.