Hackers wanted $50,000 to keep Symantec source code private
Symantec told a hacker group that it would pay $50,000 to keep the source code for some of the company's flagship security products off the Internet, the company confirmed to CNET this evening. — An e-mail exchange revealing …
Context & Ripple Effects
Symantec had said in January that it did not learn until years later that source code had been taken in a 2006 breach. The theft moved from a historical disclosure to an active leverage point when a hacker released pcAnywhere source code.
The $50,000 demand shows why delayed discovery matters: material taken in an earlier intrusion can be used for extortion long after the initial compromise, while Symantec is still accounting for what was exposed.
First-order effects
- Symantec faces both a public release of pcAnywhere code and a confirmed demand to pay for the wider material to remain private, limiting its ability to contain the incident through private negotiation.
- The episode intensifies scrutiny of Symantec's handling of the previously undiscovered 2006 source-code theft and of the products tied to that code.
Second-order effects
- Customers evaluating Symantec security products gain a concrete reason to weigh the vendor's code-protection and breach-detection practices alongside the products' security claims.
- For Symantec, the incident shifts the cost of a past intrusion beyond disclosure: extortion and released code can create a continuing product-trust burden.
Third-order effects
- Source-code theft is becoming a long-tail security risk: an intrusion can be monetized later through extortion or publication even when the original breach went undetected.
- If similar incidents recur, security vendors will be judged not only on blocking attacks for customers but also on protecting and accounting for their own software assets.
The trend: Cyber intrusions are increasingly producing durable leverage over proprietary software, turning delayed breach detection into an extortion and trust problem.