Summary: Symantec exploits journalists' ignorance, but there is at least one news site (PC World) that claims Symantec is lying

Symantec hasn't much of a business in GNU/Linux, which continues to increase in terms of market share. This may explain the latest FUD, which was tactlessly published by some news sites which cannot interpret Symantec's words for what they are: propaganda based on false premises.

What was Symantec thinking? Once again they need to boost their sales of some software for GNU/Linux, so FUD needed to be emitted somewhere.

The only sober article we have found is titled "Symantec Study Mischaracterizes Linux Spam" and it says:

So--the true source of the spam messages is still most likely a compromised Windows PC--probably part of a massive botnet. However, misconfigured, or poorly configured Linux systems are being leveraged as relays which hides the originating system, and skews the results so that it appears that Linux is responsible for spam that is more likely just passing through.

It seems reasonable to add Symantec to the basket of "vendors to avoid" (alongside Trend Micro). ⬆