Hackers have stolen some of the programming code for two of Symantec's antivirus products for businesses.
A Symantec spokesman, Cris Paden, confirmed the hack in an e-mail on Friday but said the products involved, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2, WEre four and five years old respectively. Symantec no longer sells the latter product, but does continue to service it. Mr. Paden said the hack does not affect the company's flagship Norton brand consumer products.
"We have no indication that the code disclosure impacts the functionality or security of Symantec's solutions," Mr. Paden wrote in an e-mail. "Symantec is working to develop remediation process to ensure long-term protection for our customers' information."
Source code can be exploited by competitors, or used by hackers to corrupt antivirus products or write malicious code that circumvents those products altogether.
Source : http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/symantec-confirms-segment-of-source-code-stolen/
