British man arrested over Cisco code theft

British authorities have arrested a man suspected of stealing source code from Cisco Systems in May, a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard confirmed on Friday.

The 20-year-old man, who has not been identified, was arrested on 3 September, after the Metropolitan Police Computer Crime Unit searched two residences in Manchester and Derbyshire. Julie Prinsep, a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard, said the man is suspected of committing 'hacking offenses' under that country's Computer Misuse Act of 1990.

The suspect, who has not been charged with a crime yet, was released on bail and is scheduled to appear before authorities in a London police station in early November. Computer equipment seized in the searches is being forensically examined, Prinsep said.

A Cisco representative said on Friday: "We are continuing to cooperate with law enforcement agencies on this matter. And we are encouraged that an arrest has been made. We view the arrest as what will likely be one of many steps in this matter. We will take every measure to protect our intellectual property."

The theft became public in May, when it was discovered that almost 800 megabytes of Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) source code had been posted to a Russian website. Cisco IOS is the crown jewel of the networking giant's product portfolio. It's used in all of Cisco's routing products.

News of Cisco's source code leak appeared on Russian security site SecurityLab.ru, owned by information protection specialist Positive Technologies, on May 15, two days after its administrators received the leaked source code. According to SecurityLab, online vandals had compromised Cisco's corporate network and the code. A person with the alias 'Franz' bragged about the intrusion and posted about 2.5MB of code on the Internet relay chat system, not long after the alleged break-in.

At the time of the leak, Cisco confirmed that the United States' FBI was investigating. Security experts said attackers wouldn't be able to use the code easily and that they did not see it as a threat to Cisco's security.

Marguerite Reardon writes for CNET News.com