I know that I've mention this in the past, and I'm not advocating running no antivirus software, but it's good to remember that you're using high-privileged software to load untrusted data. While mistakes can happen in any reasonably complex software, some companies are more complacent than others, and some design choices fail to respect the trust you have in them. Symantec, as far as I know, has one of the better reputations of security companies, but this flaw is terrible.
Basically, to detect malware that has been obfuscated by executable compression, antivirus software unpacks it themselves and looks. Symantec's solution runs in the kernel, allowing any malware that targets it to have kernel permissions. They were also using “at least” seven-year-old forks of open source libraries. Well… crap.
The bugs have been privately disclosed to Symantec, and fixed before Google went public. If you have any Symantec, or their consumer brand, Norton, software, then make sure it's up to date. Consumer software will have the fix pushed through LiveUpdate, but some some products, like Symantec Endpoint Protection and Symantec Protection for SharePoint Servers might require administrator action.
I wonder if this lazy
I wonder if this lazy programmers, “shareholder” protection aka make as much as possible damn the consequences, or just stupidity?
i dunno why people still use
i dunno why people still use norton. its pretty much 1 of the most invasive pieces of crapware you can install on your computer. yet time after time i run into guys who religiously espouse how good it is and take real offence when i tell em what i think of it…
i swear they put it on your machines just so they can come back in 6 months and over charge you for cleaning the system up.
if you want a good av to replace your crapware, bit-defender, kaspersky, avira (paired with malware bytes paid) will all do a better job and have less of a footprint.
It IS malware.
Malwarebytes
It IS malware.
Malwarebytes Anti Exploit is also even more important than Malwarebytes Anti Malware and you should use both.
Symantec needs to not only
Symantec needs to not only fix their latest version, but the previous version also, as a there are many people that are running the eariler version because Symantec removed some functionality from their latest version. So hopefully Symantec has some sense to patch that one generation earlier version software AV/Firewall engine also, or bring back the network security map in their latest software. A lot of people get their AV from their Cable/Internet provider so if it comes free with your internet package then you are more likely to use Symantec’s AV product.
AV/firewall makers need to always be required to provide complete manuals to their software rather than fall back on any online “Knowledge base” relate web documentation. Nothing beats a good edited and cogently written manual as opposed to those web base abominations that are always missing some software feature documentation.
So any versions that Symantec still allows to be in use, like a one generation’s previous version needs to be patched and the proper information related to all versions published so users can know for sure that their version has been patched. If any older version in not patched the Symantec needs to force an update via their auto-update mechanism.
I’m just gonna leave this
I’m just gonna leave this right here:
http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html