A hacker, using the online name YamaTough, has released the source code for the pcAnywhere utility of the antivirus firm Symantec; thus giving birth to fears that security vulnerabilities in the product may also be exploited by other hackers who may gain control of customer computers.

The release on the source code on Tuesday was apparently an upshot of Symantec's failed email negotiations pertaining to a $50,000 payout to YamaTough for destroying the code. However, Symantec has been stating that its side of the negotiations had been directed by law enforcement, while the hacker asserted that he intended publishing the nearly 1.25-gigabytes code anyway.

According to reports, the negotiations-centric emails over the much-widely-circulated $50,000 payoff apparently gave Symantec some time to issues the required fixes to its pcAnywhere program, which chiefly gives the customers the advantage of accessing their desktop computers from another location.

In a rather atypical move, Symantec had asked customers to temporarily discontinue the use of the pcAnywhere software till it issued the fixes to the program. The company finally issued patches for "known vulnerabilities" in the pcAnywhere 12.5 version on January 23, and patches for versions 12.0 and 12.1 on January 27.

About the fixes issued for the pcAnywhere software, Symantec spokesman Cris Paden said in a statement: "Symantec was prepared for the code to be posted at some point and has developed and distributed a series of patches since January 23rd to protect our users against known vulnerabilities."