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Symantec Anti-Virus Supresses Privacy Tool
salimfadhley writes "Symantec's 'Norton Antivirus' now attempts to remove Freegate, a program designed to help Chinese internet users view websites blocked by the government firewalls. Symantec offered no reason why the program (which is not spyware) was marked as a 'trojan' in Chinese versions of the software, however even an unattuned conspiracy theorist will guess that this was done at the request of the Chinese government. "
... and it's all the more suckier when basically you're paying symantec to prevent others messing around with your computer like this!
since they now evidently can be convinced to remove package x from customer system z with y number of dollars at stake, it's up for questioning if you can as a customer trust them enough to actually PAY them to do a JOB and except they get it done, and not the total opposite. indeed though even more puzzling is that is chinese goverment using this software? and how do they dare to do so when evidently symantec can not be trusted to not have tampered with the software to spy/otherwise affect what they're doing.
in all fairness it could have probably been about being the only feasible option the chinese goverment gave(hey could you add feature x, OR you'll loose us as a customer and the business permit in china) them but security isn't about taking the easy way out every time.
it could be also intresting that if some malware scanners flagged symantecs china offering as malware... because that's what it is, now.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
That's nice and all (though personally I prefer F-Prot AV ), but there are very few Antivirus software products that have Chinese versions, probably because of the rampant piracy there. The real problem with Symantec's move is that I'll bet they have a monopoly over there and that it shows they have their hand in China's pants.
Yanking a program you know about out just because one of these programs says it is bad isn't smart...though I've felt like choking a few admins who took any report as 100% valid.
That said, is this stupidity or malace?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
"Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting...Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down."
I suggest you read the moderation guidelines...
Incidentally, If it gets moderated at all this post will probably get moderated down. That's okay, I got karma to burn.
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As far as I can tell from the article, Norton marks it as a potential threat and suggests removing it. If that is indeed the case, I'm inclined to agree with you. If Freegate were being specifically targetted, I imagine they'd just remove/disable it silently.
But do all bug you daily with a pop-up box that disrupts any full-screen program currently running (and crashes a few), pointing out your subscription is up, or not allowing you to turn the box off or extend the amount of time it appears by? No, really, do they? I've only used Norton, so tell me if McAfee or Panda does that.
I personally believe anti-virus it a waste of time.
/dev/null
1: Trusted sites should be trusted.
2: It is new viruses that are more prevalent, and the ones you are less likely to be protected against.
3: Behavioural systems (i.e. secure systems) shoudl be in place to stop NEW code doing things, like an internal firewall - would you like xyz.exe whihc has been on your system for 30 minutes / 3 days or whatever to acces ABC resource / network, reg setting etc.
4: Signed content can lead to more trust.
5: this would stop dialers, toolbars, spyware, fuckware, malware, shitware, pancreasware and all other forms of binary information that belongs in
I think anti-virus has gone far enough. I use google when I download a funny file, I google the filename, I google the filesize. If I am still not happy, I don't run it.
I mean who would run whoah_funny_check_this_shit_out.exe ??
setup.exe's - again, d/l from a trusted source. Run as a low priv user if need be, test it on a sandbox to be sure... but don't fsskin virus scan it - and then run it on your prized system, because anyone can right a rm -rf ~ and cause simple havoc, and this file will not be picked up by any antivirus software.
Don't reply on virus software, I'd say it gives a false sense of security at the best of times.
Educate users is important, and I would love to see an 'untrusted file' idea, where a custom made trojan would find itself in a pretty lame sandbox if someone runs it the first time, this behaviour gets recorded, then judged if it may be harmful, and above certain levels (tried to access a network resource, tried to remove a file, tried to access existing registry tree, tries to send emails to your entire address book) it quarantines, and alerts an admin.
Any linux developers like that idea? temporal / quantitative security measures for automated sandbox maintenance and binary acceptance program.
or gnutqsmasmbap.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
There were viruses a long time before Outlook. There will be viruses a long time after Outlook. As far as "allowing someone to send email as you" - that's not Outlook's fault, that's SMTP's fault: the From: header is never authenticated. Yes, Outlook's security model sucks, but security issues are a lot more subtle than you're allowing.
For instance: what antivirus software is really designed to do is not to stop 0 day infections, but to put a limit on how long a virus can be effective. When was the last time you heard about someone who had the Michelangelo virus? Can't remember? That's because antivirus software is doing its job: preventing viruses from sticking. How about RedAlert or MSBlast (gee, Outlook had nothing to do with those, did it? Yes, we can all blame MS's sloppy approach to security, with full justice, but we have to remember that MS is a product of its niche - if IBM had ended up in the monopoly role of the monoculture, it is entirely possible that their products would have introduced "user friendly" features that undercut security, too.)
Your approach frankly isn't going to work with the majority of users. You're never gonig to be able to prevent things like "Here is the report you asked for / report.doc.vbs" showing up in a user's mailbox when that user really was expecting a report from the putative sender (I've seen this happen - precisely what the virus writer is shooting for - and in that situation, a manager waiting for an important time-sensitive report from a subordinate, it's all too easy for the recipient to fail to notice that the icon is wrong, that there's an extra extension, etc.). Some users email exes for legitimate reasons. Some users are too busy to run an MD5 check on every attachment they get (and have you ever tried to explain how MD5 works to a secretary?). If viruses can be blamed 99% of the time on anything, they can be blamed on social engineering: the same impulses that make people give out their credit card numbers to total strangers who "call from the bank" will make viruses continue to spread.
The whole reason zero day exploits are the most dangerous is precisely because anti-virus software exists. If it didn't, day 300 or day 3000 exploits would be as dangerous as 0 day expoits.