'Indian' hacker group leaks Symantec source code after failed $50K extortion attempt

London, Feb 8 (ANI): Hackers believed to be from the India-based group, the Lords of Dharmaraja, have released the source code for Internet security company Symantec after failing to secure 50,000 dollars from the firm in an extortion attempt.

Hackers made public emails from law enforcement agents posing as a Symantec employee.

Officials pretended to be the security firm in order to "offer" the hackers 50,000 dollars, but source code was allegedly released after negotiations apparently broke down.

In a lengthy series of emails, law enforcement agents posed as a fake Symantec employee named Sam Thomas, who was involved in discussions with alleged hackers from Lords of Dharmaraja, part of the wider Anonymous collective.

According to The BBC, an agent posing as Sam, told the hackers that they can pay them 2,500 dollars per month for the first three months.

"In exchange, you will make a public statement on behalf of your group that you lied about the hack (as you previously stated). Once that's done, we will pay the rest of the 50,000 dollars to your account and you can take it all out at once. That should solve your problem," the agent said.

By the end of the email discussion, negotiations began to stall.

On Tuesday, an account belonging to Anonymous suggested that more than a gigabyte of source code from the company's PC Anywhere software had been uploaded to torrent website The Pirate Bay.

Last month, users of PC Anywhere software were told by the company to disable its use where possible.

The company confirmed that "old" source code stolen by the hackers had exposed vulnerabilities in the program, which allows remote access to computers. (ANI)