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Anonymous releases stolen Symantec source code
- angersock 15y agoAnonymous: The militant wing of the FSF? "Ve vill free all ze codes! Open zource everyzing!" In all seriousness, though, this is not helping the community or fellow anons.
- metajack 15y agoWhat in the world do you think this has to do with the FSF? How is releasing proprietary code at all similar to open sourcing it? I'm really failing to understand how you made this association or why you think their intent was driven by desire to expose all code. From the torrent description it appears they are trying to out something that Symantec did wrong, not simply release the code.
- angersock 15y agoThey opened the source to the world, did they not? (yes, yes, I know the difference, but in the right light this is funny, no? Releasing the source code has gone beyond mere piracy to active liberation!)
- rbanffy 15y agoIf you know the difference, why mention the FSF? Not only this code is not free, it's toxic. If anyone does or wants to work on free or open source software, I suggest not even looking into this codebase.
- angersock 15y agoSo, kind of like the GPLv3 or AGPLv3?
- libcee 15y agoi realize that copyleft proponents and permissive license proponents tend to have different views, but painting everyone that disagrees with you as "zealots" and taking cheap pot shots like the ones you see increasingly on hn is pretty intellectually dishonest. everyone knows that open source has successfully overshadowed free software. no need to continue to marginalize them more than has already been done, you win. they'll try forever to be taken seriously, and everyone will try very hard to miss the point. also, while a lot of people on hn seem to think that permissive licensing is the only way to do it, most copyleft proponents do think there is a place for permissive licensing. so pretending it's the people calling for more than one solution "zealots" is especially silly. tl;dr but as long as you outnumber them, you can tell everyone they're the zealots, and as long as you outnumber them you can win the argument (the accusation) by popular support. 100 million open source advocates can't be wrong, (and even if they were, who cares?)
- sev 15y agoI'm not sure I understand the motive of this, other than saber rattling. Are they really fighting for everything to be open sourced to this extreme extent? Or should we assume this is the "script-kiddie" arm of Anon doing this as opposed to the more "noble"[1] work we see sometimes? [1]debatable, and none of the above is necessarily what I believe
- IgorPartola 15y agoThe motive was apparently blackmail and an attempt to shake down Symantec for $50k: http://gizmodo.com/5883024/hackers-publish-symantecs-source-code-after-50000-extortion-attempt-fails http://gizmodo.com/5883024/hackers-publish-symantecs-source-...
- libraryatnight 15y agoThough on twitter, Anonymous says it was Symantec trying to bribe them: https://twitter.com/#!/YourAnonNews/status/166898121341804544 https://twitter.com/#!/YourAnonNews/status/16689812134180454...
- kooshball 15y agoI dont know where you got that from. If you read the email thread it's clear Anon was asking for money from the beginning. It's clear extorsion. How is that at all Symantec trying to bribe them?
- rdtsc 15y ago> The motive was apparently blackmail and an attempt to shake down Symantec for $50k Symantec was the one offering the bribe. Well it wasn't even Symantec, they lied, it was FBI.
- danssig 15y agoPlease remove this post as it is misinformation, whether intentional or not.
- 15y ago
- 1880 15y agoRelevant: "Symantec was prepared for the code to be posted at some point and has developed and distributed a series of patches since Jan. 23rd to protect pcAnywhere users against known vulnerabilities." [1] If I am understanding this correctly, there were existing and known vulnerabilities that are being patched now because the source was published? It looks like open source does make software more secure :) [1]: http://www.symantec.com/theme.jsp?themeid=anonymous-code-claims http://www.symantec.com/theme.jsp?themeid=anonymous-code-cla...
- lt 15y agoI think there's a good chance that these patches are for backdoors that would be discovered looking at the source. I await for someone brave enough to get the source and publish a security analysis.
- mahmud 15y agoNo reason the security analysis cann't be published anonymously as well.
- joejohnson 15y agoIf there are backdoors which would be exposed by viewing the source, then Symantec is using security through obscurity.
- setrofim_ 15y agoThis is full disclosure[1] principle in action, and why security experts actually like "hackers" like Anonymous[2]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disclosure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disclosure [2]http://risky.biz/lulzsec http://risky.biz/lulzsec
- derleth 15y agoSo is Anonymous going to be the Malcolm X to RMS's Martin Luther King, Jr.? Shift the Overton Window to make the GPL look like the most moderate, reasonable option?
- Animus7 15y agoNo, because this actually has nothing to do with FOSS.
- tsotha 15y agoThere's a big, big difference between making the code you write freely available and stealing other peoples' code in order to make it public.
- blasdel 15y agoYes, quite like the difference between nonviolent protest for integration and armed militant separatism as independent attempts at dissolving the white man's oppression of african-americans. You missed his analogy completely.
- tsotha 15y agoNo I didn't. He was trying to imply these things are somehow poles on the same scale. They're not. For one thing, FOSS is already seen as perfectly reasonable by everyone but PR flacks from Microsoft and Oracle. It's more like your idiot kid brother robs a bank, and now nobody in the neighborhood trusts you any more.
- derleth 15y agoHave you read any of Stallman's more political and moral manifestos?
- Turing_Machine 15y agoI guess I'm surprised that anyone is still using it, given the proliferation of FOSS VNC software and the fact that both OS X and Windows now have their own remote desktop capability. Does pcAnywhere offer advantages over these?
- bwarp 15y agoIt has the same advantage that any paid anti-virus has over a free one i.e. some sense that because you've paid for something it must be better. Or in plain English, no advantage at all. The irony is that Windows has had damn near perfect remote desktop support since 2002. How they've hung on for 10 years is beyond me.
- mofle 15y agoWould be very informative if someone would write a blog post about their findings in the source code.
- gumbo 15y agoI've gone throught the email conversation, i feel like they didn't really just wanted the money. A blackmailer don't just ask: "SO - you told us a week ago that you've being requesting a response from Fin dprtmnt. We got no answer for the below question so far: ?How much do you consider ENOUGH to pay us in order to work all the issues out? " He know what the value of what he got.
- plasma 15y agoI hope whoever's blackmailing Symantec get jailed.
- marcloney 15y agoCuriously, this comment thread distinctly shows the two groups of people currently on HN - preconventional & postconventional.
- jetsnoc 15y agoWow! I'm intrigued and curious by what the "time bomb word docs" might contain. I don't really want the feds knocking on my door! Guess I will have to take a pass pulling this source code apart.
- Intermernet 15y agoHonestly, a quick poll, does anyone actually still use PC Anywhere?
- greatquux 15y agoI have one customer that uses it to remotely access Bloomberg terminals because the Bloomberg software can detect if you're connecting via remote desktop and bar access to it. Of course, after this, I'll be transitioning them to VNC...