UPDATED 12:17 EDT / JANUARY 17 2012

NEWS

We’re Waiting: Hacker Threatened to Release Full Source Code for Norton Antivirus

Saturday, a hacker going by the handle of Yama Tough threatened via Twitter that they would release the source code of Symantec’s flagship antivirus software product Norton Antivirus on Tuesday.

“This coming Tuesday behold the full Norton Antivirus 1,7Gb src, the rest will follow,” Yama Tough wrote.

The history of the potential leaked code is an interesting one that leads back to 2006 when hackers breached Symantec’s networks. According to comments made to Reuters, Symantec has acknowledged that an investigation into the matter has shown that the company’s network had indeed been compromised. The hacker Yama Tough has insinuated via Twitter that they received the code from “Indian government websites.”

As of last week the hacker has released snippets and e-mail caches Norton Utilities ostensively from the 2006 hacks. It is understood that these releases may be connected to a class-action lawsuit against Symantec filed in the U.S. alleging that the company sells its product as “scareware,” using persuasion techniques to get people to buy the full product.

The hacker, Yama Tough, has been publishing on their Twitter feed that the code releases are intended to show solidarity with the lawsuit; but it’s difficult to see exactly how this will assist.

Company spokesman Cis Paden also informed Reuters that they feared that the release might pose a mild security threat to users of pcAnywhere, a program designed to allow remote access to PCs, and that depending on the nature of the release code they would be contacting customers:

“Symantec is currently in the process of reaching out to our pcAnywhere customers to make them aware of the situation and to provide remediation steps to maintain the protection of their devices and information.”

Knowing what—if anything—these hackers have in the Norton Antivirus and pcAnywhere codebases will go a long way to substantiating their claims and it will be useful for Symantec and other antivirus vendors to prepare their security concerns. Although, the release might give other antivirus vendors an edge on Symantec (now 6 years old, of course) to understand how Norton products function under the hood.


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