Cisco takes aim at fakers with anti-piracy tool Cisco hopes to strangle the trade in counterfeit versions of its products by launching a tool designed to help US government agencies spot imitations, many of which come from China. The firm’s senior vice president for public sector, Patrick Finn, told Nextgov that increasing numbers of “rogue partners” pretend to posses Cisco …
...the 40 [Cisco 1841 routers] had been illegally modified to a Security (K9) bundle
That makes it sounds like someone did some hardware hacking to add the security module. It's a little less glamerous than that: Someone just copied the IOS from another 1841 router with the K9 feature set (or downloaded it from support.cisco.com)
I suspect that people illegally upgrading their devices software is a growing problem for Cisco. Devices are now starting to come with license keys which unlock IOS features.
I've had a run-in with Cisco's Brand Protection Team. More like Brand Protection Thugs. They accused me of being involved in illegal equipment. We produced a full audit trail of the kit showing it wasn't. They ignored emails asking for their evidence that the kit was illegal. After some proding from our account manager, they eventualy responded and said: "We can't reveal the evidence to you".
You can't show me the evidence 'cause you didn't have any. You just decided to pick on some small guy and give him a right kicking.
Anon for obvious reasons.
While Cisco may make good network gear I cant help but think that they are not the only company who is looking at the license keys as a new way to keep the hardware under their control. It will increasingly be a world where you may pay a wadge of cash for the kit only to find out you don't have the choice to use it how you want.
In no way am I advocating that you should be able to get support for said hardware if you don't have the license for it but I don't see how they should be allowed to poll your gear, the same gear you paid for, to see if your all paid up. Seeing as they make the software available on their own website they are partly to blame for it. Now if they are tracking stolen equipment then I see that as a valid use of this feature. I hate corporations that try to do this, hence why I hate crApple so much.
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