Law enforcement searched the servers of software consultant Carbonide on February 6 on suspicion that a hacker used the company's Freebox Web email service to distribute the source code to others, said Erik Wickbom, CEO of the Stockholm, Sweden-based Carbonide.
"We didn't know it was there, and we didn't know it was source code," he told CNET News.com on Friday.
Although the search occurred nearly a month ago, it did not become public until Friday.
After the four-hour search, the team of Swedish law enforcement and FBI computer experts left with copies of the evidence. "Immediately after, we deleted the source code," Wickbom said.
The source code was part of a software program known as OS/COMET, which is used by the military to control satellites and rockets, Reuters reported Friday.
The US Air Force has plans to use the software to control the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System from its Colorado Springs Monitor Station, which is part of the Air Force Space Command, according to a December press release from the software's creator, Exigent Software Technology.
The source code appears to have been stolen from the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC on December 24. The military detected the intrusion three days later, Reuters reported.
The FBI would not comment on the theft or the investigation.
The stolen source code is apparently a fragment of the complete application. That's because Wickbom said law enforcement official could fit the data on a single floppy disk, about 1.44MB of space.
Although the hacker had used the name "Leeif" on the system, Wickbom said the account was stolen. Wickbom added that the trail apparently points to a German university as the source of the intrusion into the Freebox network, but that a skilled attacker could easily have broken in elsewhere.
"He knew what he was doing absolutely," Wickbom said.
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