Hacker group Anonymous claimed late Monday that the source code of Symantec's pcAnywhere had been uploaded on The Pirate Bay site, after Symantec failed to pay them $50,000 in return for the stolen code. Symantec is currently checking whether the released source code is actually real.

Earlier on Monday, an email string posted on Pastebin referred to negotiations over payment for the source code between one Sam Thomas, purported to be a Symantec employee, and a person named Yamatough. The name of the hacker is similar to the Twitter handle of YamaTough in Mumbai who is associated with the hacker group, Lords of Dharmaraja, that had earlier claimed it had access to the source code of some Symantec products. Symantec said that the person responding to the hacker's emails was not its employee but an undisclosed law enforcement agency.

"We can't pay you $50,000 at once for the reasons we discussed previously," said one email from a purported Symantec employee Sam Thomas, who offered to pay the full amount at a later date.

"In exchange, you will make a public statement on behalf of your group that you lied about the hack."

The hacker said he never intended to take the money and warned he would soon release the blueprints for Symantec's pcAnywhere and Norton antivirus products.

Last month, Symantec said the version of the source code in the hacker's possession from 2006 no longer posed a threat to its customers even if the full blueprint to the software is released. However, after the hack was made public in January, Symantec asked its customers to temporarily disable pcAnywhere. It later declared it safe to use after offering free upgrades.