Symantec advise users to disable pcAnywhere

According to a white paper released by Symantec, the source code to various of its produces that hacker group Anonymous recently threatened to disclose was stolen in 2006, and users are advised to disable pcAnywhere until further notice. Specifically, the paper states:

"pcAnywhere is a product that allows for direct PC to PC communication and this does expose some risk if the compromised code is actually released."

This seems to imply that pcAnywhere is based on security through obscurity. (Presumably, the same security risk actually exists, albeit to a lesser extent, whether or not somebody releases the source code: whatever information is in the source code is in principle available by reverse engineering the compiled code.)

To me, the event underlines at least two lessons:

- this is precisely what may happen if you rely on security through obscurity
- if you have some security-sensitive source code stolen, "right now" would be a good time to review the stolen code, rather than 6 years later...

Or is there something about the content of the white paper and the incident in general that I'm misunderstanding?

PIFTS.EXE: Symantec finally own up

So, the world can rest easy in their beds. A message tucked away on Symantec's forums-- the same forums from which all communication about the issue was previously banned-- in which they have finally owned up to what happened:

• they released a patch to do some boring things that any old patch might have done
• but they released the patch unsigned, causing it to hit the firewall when it otherwise wouldn't have done
• because some of the posts on the Symantec forum were judged to be abusive, all posts were pulled down.

Whilst this seems to be an astonishing example of customer relations, and has brought the world's attention to the kind of behaviour that such patches may be conducting on a routine basis, it does at least appear that the Feds are not about to plunder our computers for illicit chocolate chip cookie recipes. We were spared... this time.

(And yes, I did back up my recipe collection... just in case.)