Symantec is investigating an Indian hacking group's claims that it accessed source code used in the company's flagship Norton Antivirus program.
Meanwhile, the Indian group, which calls itself Lords of Dharmaraja, has threatened to publicly disclose the source code shortly.
On Wednesday, the group posted on Pastebin what it claimed was confidential documentation related to Norton AntiVirus source code. A review of the material showed what appears to be a description of an application programming interface (API) for Symantec's AV product.
The group also posted what it claimed was the complete source code tree file for Norton Antivirus. That document appears to have been taken down.
'Yama Tough,' the hacker who posted the documents, released at least two more on Google+ allegedly related to Symantec source code. One of the documents appears to be a detailed technical overview of Norton Anti-Virus,
The document explains how the software is designed to work, but includes no actual source code, the spokesman said.
"However, a second claim has been made by the same group regarding additional source code and we're currently investigating that," he said. "For that one, we don't have any information to provide as of yet." the spokesman said.
Rob Rachwald, director of security strategy at security vendor Imperva said it is hard to know what to make of the hacking group's claims.
"We don't know how much of this is chest thumping" on the part of the hackers, Rachwald said. The source code tree file posted on Pastebin suggests the group has some potentially useful information related to Symantec's AV product, he said. "It is a good indicator, but not a perfect one.
