Symantec claims leaked anti-virus code will not affect customers

Symantec has said in a statement today that last week's leak and publication of the source code for its flagship Norton Antivirus product by hackers is related to old products and so is unlikely to significantly impact customer security.

Last week an Indian hacking group claimed to have accessed the code, and published it to Pastebin and Google+. However, these pages have been taken offline, and none are available at the time of writing.

Symantec said today that the leaked code relates to older products.

"Symantec can confirm that a segment of its source code used in two of our older enterprise products has been accessed, one of which has been discontinued.

"The code involved is four and five years old."

Although the firm said the leak would certainly not affect Symantec's Norton products for consumer customers, it appeared to be less emphatic regarding the safety of its enterprise solutions, stating that there was currently "no indication" that they would be affected.

According to the statement, the firm's own network was not breached in order to penetrate the source code.

"Symantec's own network was not breached, but rather that of a third party. We are still gathering information on the details and are not in a position to provide specifics on the third party involved."

Although Symantec refuses to name the third party, the hackers who claim responsibility for the leak say they accessed the source code from the Indian government.

Symantec said that there is no evidence that customer information has been breached, adding that it is investigating ways to ensure that this information is protected going forward.

"There are no indications that customer information has been impacted or exposed at this time. However, Symantec is working to develop remediation processes to ensure long-term protection for our customers' information."