A Swedish young man is charged with hacking and stealing the trade secrets of networking biggie Cisco.

Cisco U.S. claims that the young man hacked and stole Cisco's source code.

The indicted man is Philip Gabriel Pettersson (alias Stakkato), who is only 21 years old. Pettersson is also indicted with hacking NASA's network, including the systems at  NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, Moffett Field, California, and the Ames Research Center.

Pettersson hacked NASA on two separate dates in May 2004 and once more in October 2004. On the other hand, the hacker reportedly attacked Cisco in May 2004. Pettersson was only 16 at this time.

The Swede faces five computer hacking and trade secret theft charges, each of which are equivalent to up to 10 years in prison. He would also be required to pay a fine of $250,000 at most. The legal proceedings against the Swede ensued from an investigation conducted by the FBI, the US Secret Service, investigators at NASA and a couple of other federal agencies.

The stealing of Cisco's secret code in 2004 alarmed the security community. News of the hack spread like wildfire after the hacker copied a 2.5MB worth of passage from the source code into an IRC channel. About 800MB of Cisco IOS 12.3 and 12.3t code was said to be stolen.

The encroachment of Cisco was eventually tracked to Uppsala University in Sweden. Pettersson was established as the 16-year-old hacker just this week. The young man was indicted in March 2005 with attacking computers at Uppsala University. Charges over attacks on three Swedish universities were straightened out in 2007, and Pettersson was found guilty and required to pay a $25,000 fine, reports Wired.

The brilliant, young hacker is currently missing. Wired says that because Sweden does not deport its nationals, local charges are needed for the case to move forward.