The online theft of source code that happened several years ago from the PC security software company Symantec has now caused the company to admit that users of one of its products, the remote PC software pcAnywhere, are now at "increased risk" of having information stolen from them as a result of the code theft. The company made the statement late on Tuesday on its web site.
The issue started when a hacker group claimed to have leaked source code from Symantec earlier this month. The company said that the source code was created several years ago. At first the company said it was stolen from a third party server but later admitted that the source code was taken from Symantec"s own servers back in 2006. It"s still unknown why it took so long for the stolen source code to resurface.
Earlier, Symantec said that owners of its current software products were not at risk with this source code leak, with the exception that users of the pcAnywhere product were only slightly at risk. Now Symantec claims:
Our current analysis shows that all pcAnywhere 12.0, 12.1 and 12.5 customers are at increased risk, as well as customers using prior versions of the product. pcAnywhere is also bundled with numerous Symantec products.
The company added:
At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks.