Symantec hacked - UK boss says no war with hackers

Symantec recently criticised one such group, Cult of the Dead Cow, after it announced its own plans to make anti-virus software.

Aled Miles, Regional Director for Symantec in the UK and Ireland, admits the hack (hackers prefer to use the term 'crack') is damaging but does not believe it was a revenge attack. "Of course this is embarrassing and effects our reputation," he said. "I have no doubt that this is just the consequence of being a high profile anti-virus firm. It just shows it can happen to any company and it's just the downside of the Internet environment."

Miles also dismissed messages posted by hackers on Symantec's Website claiming the firm's servers were riddled with a virus called h3r3. "This is just a lie. There was never any danger to any visitors to our website from viruses or any sort of mobile code," he says.

One member of L0pht Industries a hacking group which has just released its own anti-hacking software, passed-up the opportunity to laugh at Symantec's misfortune. "Web page hacks are so random," says 'Space-Rogue' an executive with the company. "There may be some ulterior motive behind this but my guess is that they got lucky and one if not more of Symantec's servers came up in a scan. All this proves is that you must remain vigilant at all times. No one is immune."

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