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Symantec Claims They Knew About Slammer In Advance

Posted by michael on from the marketing-ploy dept.

truthsearch writes "Wired is reporting 'Symantec claims to have identified the Slammer worm that ravaged the Internet during the last weekend of January hours before anyone else did. Symantec then shared the information only with select customers, leaving the rest of the global community to get slapped around by Slammer.' I'm not bothered I didn't know Slammer was coming, but Symantec has a moral responsibility to inform the public if it thinks millions will be affected." It isn't clear to me how Symantec could know, hours in advance, about a worm which took ten minutes to spread throughout the entire Internet, unless they had something to do with its release. Update: 02/14 16:54 GMT by M : Wired has their math wrong; Symantec apparently had at most 20-30 minutes of early warning. Symantec claims in this press release that they discovered the worm "hours before it began rapidly propagating".

6 of 548 comments (clear)

  1. Symantec... I knew about you going out of business by digitalgimpus · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just wait til next week!

    HA HA HA HA HA [silence]
    HA HA HA HA HA [silence]
    HA HA HA HA HA [silence]

  2. I had them beat... by jpsst34 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I knew about Slammer in 1988. (Take a look at Jim Brown's character.)

    --
    How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
  3. Magic Eight Ball Says... by kbindera · · Score: 5, Funny

    My Magic Eight Ball predicts of a future exploit of a buffering problem in Microsoft software.

    How can you know this stuff Magic Eight Ball!!

  4. Re:Moral obligation? by madcarrots · · Score: 3, Funny

    When there is talk in Congress about making cyber-crimes punishable by life-imprisonment, Symantec has a resposibility to warn the masses about Internet threats. They have a reputation as "the anti-virus company" and as such they have to live up to that reputation. To say that they will sit on information that they know will disrupt millions of people, businesses, and educational instituitons andonly provide warnings to the people that pay them is admittance or extortion.

    "GIVE US THE LOOT, OR YOUR PC WILL NOT BOOT!"

    Prosecute them.

    --
    "Knock the stones together, guys!"
  5. Re:Conspiracy Theory by presearch · · Score: 4, Funny
    Thinking that Symantec would release a virus for increased profits is absurd.


    That would be like having the US selling WMD technology to other countries and then invading them
    later for having it. What responsibly sane organization would do that?

  6. Re:Moral Responsibility??? by bonewah · · Score: 2, Funny
    Symantec's ONLY moral responsiblity is to increase value to their shareholders.
    Wow, thats Symantec's ONLY moral responsibility? If thats the case, then they should sell crack to kids to boost thier profit margin. After all, acording to you the only thing that matters is if they make money. Sorry, i dont buy it. Companies have an obligation to make money, but its neither thier only one, nor thier highest one.