“Confidence in a connected world.” That’s Symantec’s current corporate tagline.
We have been endlessly barraged by security and antivirus companies about computer viruses, attacks, and threats. Most of it is self-serving: the more scared people are, the better marketing you’re doing, the more you sell.
Now we find out that Symantec had a breach of their own: 6 years ago.
They knew they had an intrusion, but they now say they didn’t know what the crackers had access to and/or stolen. Turns out it was source code for PC Anywhere – software that lets you access and use your computer remotely. With the source code, hackers could much more easily find security holes and learn to gain access to users’ PCs.
The reality is, nothing is completely safe. This is just another example in a long list of hacks and cracks.
But the problem is that a security company should have the absolute best interests of its clients at heart. And an intrusion with even the possibility of source code theft should have been followed up with warnings to clients, and refactoring of the code to ensure that any holes found in the older versions would not be presented in the subsequent software.
Massive fail, Symantec. You’ve ensured that people who want to use their PC anywhere might now find that unauthorized people could be accessing their data everywhere.
So much for confidence.