Websense mistakes Cisco.com for hack site

IPs of ill repute

Websense briefly classified the home page of networking giant Cisco as a hacking site earlier this week.

As a result of the snafu, corporate users of Websense's web filtering technology were denied access to Cisco.com for about 15 minutes on Tuesday. Websense explained that the censorware cock-up arose because an IP address used by www.cisco.com was formerly associated with a hacking site.

The hosting IP of the site http://www.cisco.com/ was flagged for investigation for potential suspicious activity as the IP had formerly been in the hacking category.

After a thorough investigation the site was reviewed and identified safe for browsing within 15 minutes.

It's doubtful that the incident had much effect on Cisco's traffic or users, but it does illustrate that false alarms in security products are a problem not solely confined to anti-virus software. ®