Hackers sought $50,000 from U.S. anti-virus firm Symantec Corp in return for the stolen blueprints to its flagship products under what the company says was a sting operation run by an undisclosed law enforcement agency via emails.<\/p>\n
The company said the emails were in fact between the hacker and law enforcement officials posing as a Symantec employee.<\/p>\n
“The communications with the person(s) attempting to extort the payment from Symantec were part of the law enforcement investigation,” company spokesman Cris Paden said, adding that no money was paid.<\/p>\n
Paden declined to name the law enforcement agency, saying it may compromise the investigation.<\/p>\n
Symantec had previously confirmed the hacker, part of a group called Lords of Dharmaraja and affiliated with Anonymous, was in possession of source code for its products, obtained in a 2006 breach of the company’s networks.<\/p>\n
An email exchange released by the hacker, who is known as YamaTough and claims to be based in Mumbai, India, shows drawn-out negotiations with a purported Symantec employee starting on January 18.<\/p>\n
The email negotiations echoed conversations in past years, viewed by Reuters, in which police agencies directed talks between victims and hackers.<\/p>\n
“We can’t pay you $50,000 at once for the reasons we discussed previously,” said one email from a purported Symantec employee Sam Thomas, who offered to pay the full amount at a later date.<\/p>\n
“In exchange, you will make a public statement on behalf of your group that you lied about the hack.”<\/p>\n
The hacker said he never intended to take the money and warned he would soon release the blueprints for Symantec’s pcAnywhere and Norton antivirus products.<\/p>\n
“We tricked them into offering us a bribe so we could humiliate them,” YamaTough told Reuters.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the hacker has posted segments of code for Norton Utilities and other programs. A software maker’s intellectual property, specifically its source code, is its most precious asset.<\/p>\n
Symantec’s Norton Internet Security is among the most popular software available to stop viruses, spyware, and online identity theft.<\/p>\n
Symantec said the version of the source code in the hacker’s possession from 2006 no longer posed a threat to its customers even if the full blueprint to the software is released.<\/p>\n
After the hack was made public in January, Symantec asked its customers to temporarily disable pcAnywhere. It later declared it safe to use after offering free upgrades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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