Nortel Networks

Nortel - the Canadian system provider of communication. In June, 2009 the management of Nortel made the decision on a sale of the company in parts instead of carrying out restructuring after bankruptcy. Business of Nortel on release of the wireless equipment for networks CDMA LTE was also taken by the Swedish company Ericsson which paid for the purchased assets of Nortel of $1.13 billion with cash. In addition to Ericsson, applied for wireless division of Nortel Nokia Siemens Networks, private investment firm MatlinPatterson and Research In Motion. They offered $650 million, $750 million and $1.1 billion respectively.

On September 14, 2009 the Nortel company officially announced completion of an auction for sale of the division of corporate solutions of Enterprise Solutions (which 80 clients enter the rating of TOP 100 of the largest companies of the USA made by the Fortune magazine) and also a share in division of state services of Nortel Government Solutions Incorporated and DiamondWare. The Avaya company became the new owner of these divisions. The Siemens Enterprise Communications company also participated in the aktsiyena also, but Avaya bypassed it at the price.

Avaya paid Nortel of $900 million cash. Besides, $15 million more are spent for the retention program of employees (Employee Retention Program) of the purchased divisions.

Management

In August, 2009 it became known that Mike Zafirovski, the president and the chief executive officer of Nortel who worked on this post nearly 4 years leaves the company.

The Chinese hackers spied on Nortel

Nortel Networks Ltd., once the largest company of the telecommunication market, and nowadays approaching disbandment within nearly a decade was under observation of the Chinese hackers whose spyware remained deeply implemented in its information systems, The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported.

The malicious code which was implemented probably in 2000 gave to hackers "access to everything" in the information systems Nortel, writes the edition. From Nortel computers technical documents, reports on Research and Development, business plans and correspondence of employees were downloaded.

In 2009 Nortel declared bankruptcy and since then sells the divisions. Separate parts of the company were purchased by such players as Avaya, Ciena, Telefon AB LM Ericsson and Genband. Nortel did not discover the cracking fact to the potential buyers, Brian Shildz, the veteran with a 19-year experience in the company who headed internal investigation recognized. (Shildz - the main source to which information in the edition refers.)

Cracking began with theft of seven passwords of heads of Nortel of the top management, including the general manager. Apparently, hackers acted from China, writes the edition.

According to intelligence agencies of the USA, the hackers connected with the public or private sector of China are most active in industrial espionage. Last year Google pointed to China as a source of difficult constructed phishing attack against many large-scale corporate users of Gmail.

In response to a request concerning Nortel cracking the Embassy of China in Washington directed the application to The Wall Street Journal where it is said that cyber attacks were "transnational and anonymous", and they should not be considered coming from China without "careful investigation and firm proofs".

Several former employees of Nortel told the edition what the company did not try to define whether its products were cracked by hackers. Also, the company did not eliminate a cracking effect before sale of the divisions. Nortel did not respond to the request the edition with a request to comment on these facts.

Nortel was the company with multi-billion turnover releasing network switches and telecommunication equipment which is installed in the majority of telephone networks and data networks around the world now. The importance of its technology found reflection in fight for 6000 patents at sale of divisions of the company last year. The consortium as a part of Apple, Microsoft, EMC, Research In Motion, Sony and Ericsson which purchased the intellectual property of Nortel for 4.5 bln. dollars cash became their owner.

• Source: Anton Gonsalves, CRN/USA