"Symantec has been lying to its customers. We exposed this point thus spreading the world that ppl need" - #AntiSec #Anonymous. Spread and share!" said a statement accompanying the download link on Pirate Bay. Symantec confirmed with a number of news organizations that the source code was legitimate.
The posting of the source code resulted from the apparent failure of a hacker named YamaTough, who claims to be a member of the Anonymous affiliate Lords of Dhamaraja, to extort $50,000 from Symantec. An email exchange between YamaTough and a purported Symantec employee named “Sam Thomas” was posted on Pastebin.
Symantec said that “Sam Thomas” was actually working with law enforcement. "The communications with the person(s) attempting to extort the payment from Symantec were part of [a] law enforcement investigation. Given that the investigation is still ongoing, we are not going to disclose the law enforcement agencies involved and have no additional information to provide", Symantec said in a statement obtained by ZDNet UK.
Last month, Symantec said a segment of its source code had been stolen by a hacking group in 2006 that made pcAnywhere vulnerable. Symantec initially said there was no risk to users as the stolen code was six years old, advising them to make sure the most recent version of the product had been downloaded. But then the company warned that users of pcAnywhere had increased risk as a result of the source code theft and recommended that they stop using the software.