Computer security giant Network Associates has become a victim of cybercrime, after two of its corporate websites were broken into.

Two of the company's Brazilian websites, www.nai.com.br and www.mcafee.com.br, were vandalised this week by a group of crackers called Insanity Zine Corp.

Front pages on both sites were replaced with rants from the crackers in English and Portuguese. The pages show the Network Associates logo and state: "And their Anti-virus software are owned too!" and "god save the script kiddies".

Matt Tomlinson, business development director at security consultant MIS, said: "It's very embarrassing for them. Firstly, they are an antivirus [AV] company - everyone associates them with this. Security is not just about AV - AV does nothing to stop people accessing your site and damaging your reputation.

"Network Associates has spent a lot of marketing pounds reinventing itself as an all-embracing security company - if they truly understand all these things, such as firewalls etc, then why has their site been hacked? It really is a kick in the proverbials."