Symantec's DeepSight threat warning system sent out an erroneous "ThreatCon 4" warning on Friday caused by an errant product test. ThreatCon 4 is the highest level of warning that can be issued by the DeepSight system, and is supposed to indicate times where "extreme global network incident activity is in progress." The level 4 warning has never been issued; the last time level 3 was reached was back in 2004. Symantec issued a retraction of the false alarm approximately an hour after it was issued, and so far, no reports of harm from the false alarm are apparent. Actually, it doesn't even seem like anyone took this warning that seriously at all, considering the lack of any sort of response. And without any sort of response, doesn't that make the early warning system, well, not that useful? After an hour without much of a response, they should have just said: "This was a test of the DeepSite early warning system. Had this been a real warning..."