Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook: drag2share: DON'T PANIC: Hackers Broke Into A Major Security Product, But It Was An Old Version (SYMC)

Saturday, January 07, 2012

drag2share: DON'T PANIC: Hackers Broke Into A Major Security Product, But It Was An Old Version (SYMC)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/symantec-confirms-hackers-accessed-enterprise-security-product-2012-1

frustrated tired computers eyestrain

Hackers successfully broke into an older version of an enterprise security product dubbed Symantec Antivirus, the company confirmed today.

The issue caused a panic on Thursday but by Friday, Symantec had sorted out which products were affected and claimed the risk was minimal to its millions of users.

The products involved were Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 and Symantec Antivirus 10.2, Symantec told SecurityWeek. While the company still supports them -- meaning there are enterprise customers that still use them -- the first product is four years old and Symantec Antivirus 10.2 has been discontinued.

A Symantec spokesperson told SecurityWeek that the products still work and have not been broken -- they didn't miss a virus, for example.

The hackers broke into servers run by Indian military intelligence, reports CNET, where they were able to read its source code and figure out how it works. However, this does not automatically mean that they can grab corporate data from it, even when it's being used by a customer.

At least the hackers did not get the products by breaking into Symantec's own network, as happened to security vendor RSA last summer.

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