NewsForge: Commentary: If Only Cisco Code Had Been Open Source

“The 15 May 2004 theft and publishing of the source code for
Cisco’s IOS router firmware could mean a wave of exploits against
the critical router infrastructure of the Internet will be on its
way. If that happens, it will be because Cisco ignored one of the
iron rules of network security–and experts the world over will be
muttering ‘if only IOS had been open source.’

“The iron rule is Kerckhoffs’ Law, which states, ‘A cryptosystem
should be designed to be secure if everything is known about it
except the key information.’ Now that the source code of IOS is
circulating in the cracker/phreak underground, we’re going to find
out if IOS followed that rule. If it didn’t, we’ll find out the
hard way…”

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