Slashdot Mirror


Symantec Antivirus May Execute Virus Code

An anonymous reader writes "Symantec has admitted that a serious vulnerability exists in the way its scanning engine handles Ultimate Packer for Executables. According to a ZDNet article, this means the scanner would execute the malicious program instead of catching it. Tim Hartman, senior technical director for Symantec Asia Pacific, said: "A vulnerability is not a vulnerability till somebody discovers it but because this is now known, somebody could craft an e-mail, mass mailer or a virus that takes advantage of it. It affects our firewalls, antispam, all the retail products and the enterprise products as well"" Symantec recommends you immediately patch your software.

6 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Immediately patch? Really? by mrighi · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's because they gave out the wrong link. What they really meant to say was, "Symantec recommends you immediately patch your software."

  2. Re:huh? by pegasustonans · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, you've got it all wrong. The person didn't actually exist, and all of the people who thought about the person existing didn't exist either. And all of the people who thought the person might or might not exist, but probably didn't, and should therefore be disregarded, were very clever and were hired by anti-virus companies to do their PR for them.

    --
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
  3. Okay, Farkers... by Mmm+coffee · · Score: 5, Funny

    You know all those idiotic flamewars that spring up whenever the "irony" tag is used?

    Once and for all - THIS is irony. You can shut up now.

  4. Re:Better than just free by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Use of AVG Free Edition within any organization or for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited."

    I guess Santa isn't Dancing anymore.

  5. Re:huh? by worst_name_ever · · Score: 4, Funny

    You must not have gotten the latest memo from Symantec: "We apologise again for the fault in the antivirus software. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked."

    --

    In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
  6. Re:Better than just free by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 5, Funny

    As long as it's not company policy ie. each employee that uses it is installing it for personal use, it's free.

    I worked for a company that refused to pay for AV, and we all had it on our desktops, except the managers.


    So what part of "home" did you all deliberately misunderstand?