Fighting malware and spam

Symantec slip sparks suspicion, spam

Update error leads to conspiracy theories and exploitation of fears.

A faulty update issued to some users of Symantec's Norton product line yesterday has led to an explosion of rumour, uncertainty and attempts to exploit a lack of clear information.

The update, a file called 'Pifts.exe', was released without the required certifying signature, which caused firewall portions of Norton's suites to alert users to its unexpected and apparently unauthorised activities. Early requests for information posted to forums maintained by Symantec were quickly overtaken by junk spam entries exploiting the wide interest in the issue among worried Norton users, and the removal of the spam-soaked postings sparked a further deluge of conspiracy theories as some assumed a cover-up on the part of Symantec. By the time official information was made available, the situation was being widely exploited, with many search results for the suspect filename leading to genuine malicious code.

Symantec's belated official response to the issue is here, with detailed coverage of events as they emerged blogged by the Washington Post's Brian Krebs here.

12 March 2009

Tags: conspiracy, firewall, spam, symantec.   

5 comments

shame on them because a dynamic corporate company and the world trusted security software hit by spam

by rabih zouein, 13 March 2009, 16:40

That the credibility of, and user confidence in Norton security products is so easily compromised (whether maliciously or otherwise) points up the fact that the "average" PC user simply DOESN'T need to pay for commercial products.

Symantec's defence that it was caused by "human error" is insufficient in itself to justify any other opinion. If just ONE of Symantec's own employees make a major error that has global ramifications (even benignly), then what are we to expect of the effectiveness of their entire security products range? How often has, and will, the systems security of users been, or will be compromised inadvertently? Can Symantec offer a 100% guarantee that this debacle -- or similar -- will never occur again? If not, why then should I pay my hard-earned dollars for an (apparently) second-rate product?

For Symantec to effectively lose control of their own bulletin board under an avalanche of spam, and to be forced into closing down their blogs comments is laughable! Consumers should be made aware that there are numerous FREE anti-virus-malware protection products that are readily available on-line, and that they provide more than adequate protection for the average user's PC.

by ausGeoff, 18 March 2009, 11:12

I note that Symantec's products come bundled with most every out of the box pc and note book. It is the first thing I remove and replace with something much less resource intensive and yet far more effective. *cough avg *cough

Regards,

Snoogs

IT Tech

by Snoogles, 02 April 2009, 12:20

Not expected atleast from Symentec.

by Friday, 03 April 2009, 08:13

I've used free products and products I've paid for but always come back to the symantec line. Yes this was a mistake and unfortunately placed a black mark on an otherwise, in my opinion, good company but it was human error. This shouldn't happen from a company that puts out sucha product but who knows how many other companies had similar problems that were never reported?

I've used the symantec line for may years and I always hear of the resource hog complaints. I am running windows vista ultimate with norton 360 ver 2.5 and only see a 3mb hit on my memory. I wonder how many of the complaints are not due to the symantec products but due to the user trying to run vista, or even xp, with the minimal amount of memory. I run a small computer repair business and many of the "slow" systems I see only have 512 mb of memory and sometimes even less.

I also wonder how many of the complainers, who switch to free software, are also opening their systems to infection by using the free music donwload and bit torrent sites which have proven to be one of the easiest places to become infected.

Just my thoughts.

by misawatech, 19 April 2009, 02:46

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