Symantec Looks Into Claims of Stolen Source Code

wiredmikey writes "A group of hackers claim to have stolen source code for Symantec's Norton Antivirus software. The group is operating under the name Dharmaraja, and claims it found the data after compromising Indian military intelligence servers. So far it's unclear if the claims are a significant threat, as the information posted thus far by the hackers includes a document dated April 28, 1999, that Symantec describes as defining the application programming interface (API) for the virus Definition Generation Service. However, a second post entitled 'Norton AV source code file list' includes a list of file names reputedly contained within Norton AntiVirus source code package. Symantec said it is still in the process of analyzing the data in the second post." Update: 01/06 07:05 GMT by S : In a post to their Facebook page, Symantec has now said some of their source code was indeed accessed, but it was four or five years old.

Comments

Bleh!

[SeaFox]

Stealing source code from Symantec is like stealing your neighbor's garbage.

Hunh?

[symbolset]

Stealing Symantec's source code is like stealing Typhoid Mary's soup.

Re:Hunh?

[expo53d]

I would be interesting to run grep through the source code. Bet you would find lines like:

# This part slows down the computer if the license is not renewed

Re:Nope..

[Enigma23]

Maybe they're white hat hackers who will return the code in a vastly less bloated form?

Awesome

[zerojoker]

Finally someone can write a working uninstaller!

Here's to a brighter future!

[BagOCrap]

Hope these hackers can turn the source code into something useful.

Re:Nope..

[GameboyRMH]

Imagine the poor black hat who only got this turd as loot. It's like breaking into a bank vault and finding out that it only had some smelly bath mats inside.