There are ways to fix this, if they want to fix it.
Cisco could kill the counterfeit market for their hardware if they dropped the prices of the boards. They'd then need to move toward a software business and/or use licensing to enable the hardware. Imagine if they were to get most of their revenue from "software licenses", they wouldn't even care if you bought your cards from somewhere else - counterfeit or second-hand, as you'd have to pay them to get them unlocked in the cage.