In Sting, Symantec Offered Hacker $50,000 to Protect Code

As part of a sting operation, Symantec told a hacker group that it would pay $50,000 to keep the source code for some of the its flagship security products off the Internet, the company confirmed to CNET. An e-mail exchange revealing the extortion attempt posted to Pastebin today shows a purported Symantec employee named Sam Thomas negotiating payment with an individual named "Yamatough" to prevent the release of PCAnywhere and Norton Antivirus code.

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