A hacker group calling itself the Lords of Dharmaraja claimed it uncovered the source code on servers belonging to India’s military intelligence agency.
“Symantec can confirm that a segment of its source code has been accessed,” the company said in a statement released Friday. “Symantec’s own network was not breached, but rather that of a third party entity.”
Symantec acknowledged that segments of source code that the hackers posted online and passed to reporters belonged to Symantec’s 2006 Endpoint Protection 11.0 and its discontinued Symantec Antivirus 10.2. Symantec’s Endpoint Protection is currently at version 12.0.
They wrote:”As of now we start sharing with all our brothers and followers information from the Indian Militaty Intelligence servers, so far we have discovered within the Indian Spy Programme source codes of a dozen software companies which have signed agreements with Indian TANCS programme and CBI.
Now we release confidential documentation we encountered of Symantec corporation and it’s Norton AntiVirus source code which we are going to publish later on, we are working out mirrors as of now since we experience extreme pressure and censorship from US and India government agencies.”
In this age when computer technology is ever more sophisticated, beyond our capacity to even understand some of it, it is vital to be wary of the possible applications. Some people use their skills for good while others use it for less well-intended reasons, and are indiscriminate of their targets.
These not so good people develop software with the intent of damaging and exploiting your computer and are found all around the internet, almost undetectable to the users. An unprotected computer will immediately fall foul to these viruses while surfing the internet, so it is imperative for everybody to be using antivirus software. The three main viruses you will come across are worms, trojans and spyware.
Worms. Worms are a type of malware that is self-duplicating, taking advantage of the networks your computer is connected to in order to spread itself. This can be highly disruptive to the traffic across your networks and can even delete or corrupt files.
Trojans. Named after the Trojan Horse used in the Trojan War, this virus does exactly what the horse did by pretending to be something it is not. They pretend to be a download, often an update or fix you don’t need, and install a program on your computer that you don’t want. It can be used to remotely access your computer and sensitive files and data such as bank account details and passwords.
Spyware. Spyware is stealthily placed on your computer without you noticing, with the intent of monitoring your activities. Your personal details and browsing habits can be logged which can be used to send you adverts that you do not want.
With these threats running rampant all over the internet, is it impossible to protect yourself without any help; good free antivirus software is incredibly important.