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The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced that former Cisco Systems, Inc. employee Peter Morch pled guilty today to exceeding his authorized access to Cisco’s computer systems and obtaining information valued at more than $5,000.
Mr. Morch, a resident of San Francisco and a citizen of Canada and Denmark, was charged in a Criminal Information filed on March 13, 2001, with one count of exceeding authorized access to a protected computer and obtaining information valued at more than $5,000, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2)(C) & 1030(c)(2)(B)(iii).
In pleading guilty, Mr. Morch admitted that in September and October 2000 while employed at Cisco Systems-Petaluma, but shortly before his resignation from the company, he intentionally exceeded his authorized access to the computer systems of Cisco Systems by logging into the computer system both as an administrator and under his own username from a workstation belonging to another Cisco software engineer. He did so in order to obtain proprietary information that he knew he was not authorized to have, and he used the other engineer’s computer because it had a writable CD drive capable of "burning" CDs.
Mr. Morch admitted that he burned a number of CDs on the other employee’s computer, using writable CDs that he obtained from the shelf above his computer monitor, and obtained material that included Cisco proprietary materials relating to both released Cisco products and then-ongoing developmental projects.
According to an affidavit filed in the case Mr. Morch was a team leader for a research and development project pertaining to voice-over and optical networking. The day before he left Cisco, Mr. Morch copied Cisco project ideas, general descriptions, requirements, specifications, limitations of design, and procedures to overcome the design difficulties for a voice-over and optical networking software product. Shortly after, Mr. Morch started working at Calix Networks, a potential competitor with Cisco. According to the affidavit, Mr. Morch copied Cisco’s proprietary information onto a Calix laptop and the Calix network. Calix cooperated fully with the investigation.
The sentencing of Mr. Morch is scheduled for June 27, 2001 at 2:30 pm before U.S. District Court Judge Maxine M. Chesney in San Francisco. The maximum statutory penalty for each count in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2)(C) & 1030(c)(2)(B)(iii) is five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. However, the actual sentence will be dictated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of factors, and will be imposed in the discretion of the Court.
The prosecution is the result of a six-month investigation by special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Joseph E. Sullivan and Jonathan Howden fo the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) Unit are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted the case.
A copy of this press release and key court documents filed in the case may also be found on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/can/.
All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew J. Jacobs at (415)436-7181.
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