A hacker, who claimed possession of the source code, demanded $50000 in exchange for not making it public.

Symantec confirmed that the source code for pcAnywhere has been posted publicly.

“It is part of the original cache of code for 2006 versions of the products that Anonymous has claimed to possess throughout the past few weeks. We were prepared for the code to be posted at some point and have developed and distributed a series of patches since January 23rd to protect pcAnywhere users against known vulnerabilities,” Symantec said in a website post.

Earlier, Symantec said that in a sting operation via email, a hacker claiming to be a part of the Anonymous group claimed to be in possession of the company’s source code for its Norton Antivirus and pcAnywhere, and tried to extort $50,000 to prevent the release of the code.

Symantec conducted an internal investigation into this incident and worked closely with law enforcement given the attempted extortion and apparent theft of intellectual property. Symantec never made any offer to meet the hackers’ extortion demands.

The exchange of emails was posted online at pastebin.com, and showed how the security company negotiated with the hacker.

The security firm had issued a warning in January that users of its pcAnywhere software disable the product following the theft of the source code.

“We anticipate that Anonymous will post the rest of the code they have claimed to have in their possession. So far, they have posted code for the 2006 versions of Norton Utilities and pcAnywhere. We also anticipate that at some point, they will post the code for the 2006 versions of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition and Norton Internet Security. As we have already stated publicly, this is old code and Symantec and Norton customers will not be at an increased risk as a result of any further disclosure related to these 2006 products,” the company said.

The firm said that it continues to urge pcAnywhere customers to ensure that pcAnywhere version 12.5 is installed, all relevant patches that have been released are applied, and best security practices are followed.