Symantec: Anonymous stole source code, users should disable pcAnywhere

<p><pre><code> &#62; Symantec released a patch fixing three vulnerabilities &#62; in pcAnywhere version 12.5 (the current version) on &#62; Monday, and said it will continue issuing patches &#62; "until a new version of pcAnywhere that addresses all &#62; currently known vulnerabilities is released." </code></pre> Sounds like they've been sitting on a bunch known vulnerabilities. At least this acts as a kick in the pants to <i>actually</i> fix them.

&#62; Symantec says the theft actually occurred in 2006<p>So somebody stole the source code <i>five</i> years ago and they're starting to fix <i>some</i> of the glaring vulnerabilities today because this somehow got in the news?<p>That's reason enough to stay away from all network-enabled Symantec products, I would expect them to be equally insecure if this is the way they do things.

If hackers can find exploits in your software after its code is made public, then they can find them before as well. Relying on source code being secret is security through obscurity, which everyone should know is not security at all. Especially for software with security implications (remote access, encryption, etc.) the last thing you want is proprietary code.

Protip: ClamAV [0] is a software that doesn't need to rely on code secrecy, and it's completely free (as in beer and, more importantly, freedom).<p>[0] <a href="http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/" rel="nofollow">http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/</a>

Oh yeah, sure. Anonymous stole your source code 6 years ago. Give me a break.

I think this stands as a perfect example that I can use to educate friends and family on why having access to the source code for the programs that you use is important.<p>When someone is proud of their work, they like to show it off, and this is true of programmers as well. If I make a neat program, and I'm really proud of the job I did writing it, I want to show that off by showing people the source code -- thus increasing my epenis/karma/reputation points etc. Conversely, if I presided over a software product that I knew had bugs and I needed to release said product regardless, I would <i>have</i> to keep the source code tucked away so that nobody could tell how bad said product is.

TIL that pcAnywhere still exists. Last time I used it, 56k modem was the state of the art.

People still use PCAnywhere?