News Symantec AntiVirus Vulnerability

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/12/21/symantec_av_vulnerability/

 

suggesting people use another program???

just dont open rars in random emails from people you dont know

 

You know, I've always told my friends not to use Norton because it's a system hog, now this is just more fuel for my fire. Seriously though, when you can get AVG for free, and it's just as good, and is far less of a system hog, why would you use Norton? Heck, if I wanted the best antivirus out there, I would go guy a copy of Panda Titanium.

 

Depending on how you have your system set up, Symantec will check the rar as it downloads, accidentally loading the virus (you don't need to open it, hence the vulnerability). For now, better safe than sorry...AVG is free and works quite well. One can be sure Symantec will get a priority patch out ASAP.

 

reaper : panda is one of the worst AV's out there! top of the list of good ones is NOD32 followd by Symantec Corperate Edition AV (nortons corp version -- which is good) so yea, all get NOD

 

Strange, I've heard nothing but good things about it. Granted this was almost a year ago, but things couldn't have chagned that quickly. Last I saw it detected more viruses than anyone. Plus I really liked their geographical statistics page. Either way, it's agreed, don't bother with Norton Home Edition.

 

Norton is Symantec's consumer brand. There is no "Norton corp version".

Symantec AntiVirus - for business users
Norton AntiVirus - for home users

I use Symantec myself, but my email goes through 2 other email server based scanners first so I should be fine.

 

Are you suggesting Symantec have a different virus definitions list for Home and Corporate editions? Seems a bit pointless.

http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/products.cfm?productid=155

"Centralized configuration, deployment, alerting, and logging enables administrators to manage the network to determine which nodes are vulnerable to virus attacks."

Or were you just being pedantic?

 

No, the virus definitions will be the same, it costs alot to develop a good set of them, so there would be no point in having two different ones.

Their Corp product is good because it doesn't hog resources, whats the point in having AV if it makes your PC so slow you might as well have a virus? The corp product doesn't do that at all, its lightweight, but has the very high quality Symantec definitions that make Norton a good product for noobs and enterprise level systems alike.

 

I was being pedantic (which is nothing new), since all of Symantec's business line goes under the Symantec name and not their Norton brand. I like to keep the lines distinct, and not blurred - like not calling Norton Ghost/AntiVirus "Symantec Norton Ghost/AntiVirus" *shudder*

 

Web Sensibility & Knowledge of Security>*

I'm sure all bit-techers know this, but we need one of 4 things to happen:

#1) We educate the less techy about internet security
#2) Everyone goes and switches to Mac/Linux/FreeBSD
#3) Everyone gets a good Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Browser & Firewall/Router
#4) Microsoft make Vista hella more secure

 

I'd imagine the type dumb enough to do that nowadays won't have a way to, as windows doesn't have native rar support or anything, unlike with zip. I dunno why people prefer rar anyways, but oh well.

I'll stick with not being stupid and knowing my computer is clean of crapwaruses. Unlike my mom's machine, full of crap despite having two sets of av/as/aa software.

 

Ive always found Norton to be well below the line of iffy in terms of catching the viruses.

When ever i work on someones computer that runs Norton, I do a full scan document any findings and remove the program if nothing is found. I then install AVG and 8 out of 10 times Ive found a minimum of 3 viruses.

Why im a AVG fan boy?

AVG = free (unless you want pro)
Norton = only free when purchased with a $300 comptuer from gayway, dell or HP (wal-mart) otherwise something like $19-$29.99 for a 1 year subscription.

 

I honestly hate AVG. On every computer that I have seen it installed on, it has been a huge hog and the computer runs slower than crap. It may just be that the people had it set up wrong, but I have never needed AVG or norton. I use FF and Ad-Aware free, which is definitely no hog, and I almost never get viruses. The only times I have gotten viruses have been from some .rar files on limewire, which Ad-Aware quickly found and cleaned up. I have not had any viruses since then.

 

the difference between you and the common computer user is quite large I might add. You have experience with the internet and the common knowledge to avoid and prevent getting infected before it happens and once it does you know how to act fast to stop it.

The average computer user thinks their cd-rom doubles as a cup holder, you do the math. It may be a little blow out of realities scop but the people that call me when their computer breaks are right along those lines. AVG for me takes very minimal resources when i have it running and the only time it does hog your resources is when it is scanning. It may have areas to improve but compared to most AV programs that cost you money theres not much room to complain.

I cant speak for all AV programs because there are others out there that work well also. I havent had a chance to test out NOD32 but im looking forward to it from what ive heard.

 

You do realise that if everyone picks option 2 and moves to one of those platforms then there will be a lot more exploits for those operating systems. Virus writers do the same thing other makers do. They make their target OS the most popular one.

I don't have any AV installed on my computer and I have only ever gotten one virus which was from a LAN were I was hosting the net connection for a mate straight after I had built my new machine (2 years ago). It was one of the LSASS exploit worms (can't remember which one it was). Since then I have not had a single virus or spyware program on my machine. I just don't install hardly anything other than programs that I trust (IE most p2p progs) and have a good hardware firewall set up. Every now and then I scan my PC for root kits and viruses, but I haven't found any for several years.

 

I don't find avg a hog atall only when scanning but it does that at 8 in the morning when im in bed every norton ive had been crap and slow and it was deffo a hog when I unistalled it for avg I noticed a large improvment in boot time and general system speed

 

i didnt run any AV software for the longest time.. I have AV corp installed on a few of my family's machines. currently im running windows onecare AV software on my laptop, dont need it i just installed it because i wanted to see it

 

Norton AV is crap, it slowed down the speed of my xp machine to slower then a FULL kettle boiling !!
AVG rules but clam is supposed to be better.
OH NAV is a pain to remove.

 

I prefer F-Secure's F-Prot myself. Don't know what it catches compared to others, but the real-time protector is very handy and doesn't seem to hog any resources.

Although, tbh, I've never really needed it. A bit of common sense goes a long way.