Calling itself the Source Code Club, the site offered what is thought to be illegally obtained source code for software from Napster and Andover, Mass.-based Enterasys Networks Inc. at a price of thousands of dollars. Although representatives from both companies have not yet confirmed whether the source code was stolen by the owners of the site, or was merely obtained through some other online source.
The Source Code Club posted a notice only three days after opening on July 12 that it was closing due to a reorganization of its business model.
"Our business model is currently being re-designed to alleviate some of the initial fears our customers faced," the notice read. "Selling corporate secrets is ... very tricky, and we believe it is an area that we can conquer."
The site's operators, which have a web address that traces back to the Ukraine, did not pinpoint a date the site would re-open, but there is some speculation that the FBI and lawyers from Napster parent company Roxio Inc., and Enterasys may have played a role in the website's closure.
The Source Code Club kicked-off Monday with a posting on an online discussion group bragging about source code and design documents for both the Dragon IDS 6.1 software from Enterasys Networks Inc., and peer-to-peer server and client software from Napster.
Dragon was listed at a price of $16,000 and Napster for $10,000.
According to a representative for Enterasys, an analysis of the code reveals that it might have been obtained from a computer hard drive or CD rather than directly from the company's network.
Enterasys has said that it is possible the code was lifted after an Enterasys developer copied it onto a CD, which is forbidden under company rules and regulations.
In May, Cisco Systems was the subject of a hacker source code theft that ended up on a Russian website for sale. Cisco Systems Inc. is the maker of some of the core elements that direct computer traffic over the Internet.