A hacker linked to a notorious cybercrime group breached the company's corporate network
Tech giant Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO) revealed in a series of blog posts that it fell victim to a cyberattack by a hacker linked to a major cybercrime group. Cisco said its threat-intelligence unit Cisco Talos became aware of the attack on May 24 after a "series of sophisticated voice phishing attacks" helped the hacker gain access to its corporate network via an employees credentials. While no customer data was breached, some of the company's internal files were posted to the dark web.
Shares of Cisco Systems are relatively unaffected by the news, last seen up 0.2% at $46.14. When we last checked in on the equity around this time last month, it had just been saddled with a bear note and was sitting dangerously close to annual lows. It looks like the stock is still struggling to break out past the consolidation level we called out at the $46 mark, though the equity has found support at its 60-day moving average.
Since last month's analyst downgrade, the brokerage bunch has remained relatively quiet, and there's still quite a few hold outs covering the stock. Of the 20, 11 say "hold" or worse, compared to nine "buy" or better ratings. Short interest, meanwhile, has been slowly rolling over, falling 2% in the last two reporting periods.
Options traders have also taken a pessimistic stance over the past couple weeks. At the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), CSCO sports a 10-day put/call volume ratio of 1.27, which sits higher than 96% of readings from the past year.