According to Reuters, Hackers taken $50,000 from U.S. anti-virus firm Symantec in return for the stolen blueprints to its flagship products, which the company stated was a part of sting operation run by an undisclosed law enforcement agency via emails – which were too a part between the hacker and law enforcement officials posing as a Symantec employee.
The hacker who is known as YamaTough, part of a group called Lords of Dharmaraja, affliated with Anonymous and claims to be based in Mumbai, India released an email exchange, which shows out negotiations done with Symantec employee.
“The communications with the person(s) attempting to extort the payment from Symantec were part of the law enforcement investigation,” company spokesman Cris Paden said, adding that no money was paid. “We can’t pay you $50,000 at once for the reasons we discussed previously,” said one email from a purported Symantec employee Sam Thomas, who offered to pay the full amount at a later date. “In exchange, you will make a public statement on behalf of your group that you lied about the hack.”
The company even asked its customers to temporarily disable pcAnywhere after the hack was made public in January – it was later declared safe to use after free upgrades.
Update 1: “You won’t believe it but Symantec offered us money to keep quiet,” a hacker from the group who uses the name YamaTough wrote on Twitter.
