PSA: Disable Your Symantec pcAnywhere Software ASAP

Those of you out there still using the Symantec product pcAnywhere, an application which allowed you to access your computer remotely in a relatively early version of "cloud" computing, should immediately cut it out. Symantec has issued an announcement saying that the hacking and theft of several of their security products several years ago has finally caught up with them, so to speak, and the pcAnywhere software you may still know and love has become too dangerous to use as a result of it. On the other hand, they do mention that they're working on fixes for the security holes that pcAnywhere now presents and will be passing those out to consumers sometime in the future.

At the moment there are no other security threats included in the Symantec portfolio of products, as Adi Robertson of The Verge mentions, but if you've got pcAnywhere working anywhere in or around your products at the moment, you should certainly shut it down. What hackers and lovers of busting into your computer alike will be prone to do, if they find that you're using the software, is to slide in undetected on your pcAnywhere connection and lift whatever they please. Wouldn't want that happening now, would you?

Last week a group of hackers associating themselves with the Anonymous collective let loose a warning that they had possession of the source code for a handful of Symantec products and that they'd let them go public at the drop of a hat. Because of this, we'll be keeping an eye out for additional threats as they may appear in coming weeks and months. For now though, as Symantec says, you should be perfectly alright with what you're running.

[via Symantec]