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Symantec Labels Vicars' Software as Spyware
ukhackster writes "The curse of Norton Antivirus has struck again. This time, Britain's vicars have been hit. Norton mistook a legitimate file for a piece of spyware, and those who followed the instructions found that their sermon-writing application no longer worked. Norton was once an essential application. Is it turning into a joke?"
Given that they're also reporting that 80% of viruses defeat Norton and the other big AV programs, I'd say yes, it is a joke.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Don't think sorry's easily said
Don't try turning tables instead
You've taken lots of Chances before
But I ain't gonna give any more
Don't ask me
That's how it goes
Cause part of me knows what You're thinkin'
Don't say words you're gonna regret
Don't let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusation before
And I ain't gonna take any more
Believe me
The sun in your Eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't Need to see any more
To know that I can read your mind, I can read your mind
Don't leave false Illusions behind
Don't Cry cause I ain't changing my mind
So find another fool like before
Cause I ain't gonna live anymore believing
Some of the lies while all of the Signs are deceiving
I am the eye in the sky...
Eye In The Sky
Written by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Norton was once an essential application." No, it was never any such thing. Norton has always been amoung the worst anti-virus software. Norton just got corporate mindshare, where as "sketchy foreign companies" like RAV and KAV scared PHBs.
I think you're a bit behind the times mate.
Its been a joke for quite a while now.
"Protestant Module" sold separately.
A sermon-writing application? Word doesn't have a Insert->Scripture option?
for YEARS in the corporate environments I've worked in. Ever since their marketing campaigns based on FUD, or maybe it was Peter Norton stating that viruses weren't a threat to PC users, then saw that they were and started writing anit-virus software.
If vicars, imams, priests, friars, clerics, and rabbis were the only things Norton was blocking, I'd say it's time to reevaluate my longstand hatred of them in favor of an uneasy alliance.
An anecdotal Norton lifetime experience:
At one time I considered Norton an essential application/utility because I couldn't explain sufficiently to new computer owners why Norton (and McAffee, etc.) were unnecessary, evil, and just wrong for them. So, I'd always get their credit card number, hold my nose, and ante up their money for their peace of mind.
But after years of being called back and finding computer disarray on these "happy" users caused directly or indirectly by the intrusive "anti-virus" software suites such as Norton, I've switched tactics and now the very first thing I do when working on others' computer (with their permission of course) is uninstall any of the mainstream virus protection programs, download AVG free version and am done with it.
I've found since taking this approach virtually no call backs where any problems were created by AVG, with much happier friends and family who have at the same time saved themselves a couple of bucks.
Once an essential application Norton? Only in as much as Norton had been able to (and continues to) convince the world they are essential, not a hard task in the FUD universe that is Windows.
Maybe this is a sign that relig... err I mean magic and technology can't coexist.... oh, wait..
*ducks behind cliched fantasy story*
Just for completeness, I'll mention that it's the 'Vickers' machine gun, not 'Vicars.'
m
http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/mgun_vickers.ht
Yes, I realize it's a pun, but it would have worked either way, really.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I think on a corporate level, anti-virus is a *must*, you're dealing with 100s of millions of dollars in transactions and any downtime is money lost... For the tech-savvy home user though, I really don't think anti-virus is essential. I run an iMac with OSX 10.4.7, and an IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad with Windows XP SP2 and all the latest updates and hot-fixes. I refuse to put anti-virus on it because I think it sucks up too many of my resources. Since switching from IE to Firefox (back in the 0.4 Fire phoenix days) I have no had 1 single issue of spyware, malware, or virus problems on my machine. I keep everything up-to-date and I know who, what, when, and where I'm downloading all my files from the internet. I'll be honest, I pirate plenty and still haven't had any problems... The more I see these anti-virus solutions, it seems that they are designed to keep dumb people from from doing dumb things...
Well, accoring to Dawkins, sermon generators would be explicit tools for the carrying of a viral message.
I think the program may be working properly as designed.
Ryan Fenton
Friars tend to live a secluded life and have close to no relationship with the world out of their monastery. May I ask why you dislike them? Their home-made honey and liquor are usually delicious :)
Global warming is a cube.
The Bishop!
If people just list down what they do on their computers, most of them are going to find that a Linux box would do them just fine (If they don't want to pay the Apple premium). Getting rid of the vicious circle of the Virus scanners / Privacy tools / spyware blockers, their updates / fake warnings and worthless Microsoft security updates should be a very compelling reason, IMHO.
(AP Cupertino, CA) A mysterious fire is raging out of control at the Symantic HQ on 20330 Stevens Creek Blvd.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
....we can replace the Norton name with any other vendor's name and still have the same discussion. The only reason that we're beating up on Norton is that they've shot themselves in the foot like this before.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I haven't use any antivirus software on my home computer for years, and have had fewer viruses than when I was using it. Go figure.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
"Usually it takes a lot to get a clergyman upset, but we have had a fair few on the phone. There's been no talk of smiting yet, but we'll wait and see," Green added.
I love the Brits.
I stopped using Norton a day after I installed it because when I opened my mp3 directory the world exploded.
against Norton or the clergy?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Norton ClergyBlocker 2006 Pro Edition.
I'd buy two copies.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
When has norton ever been an essential application? If a person is resonably cautious and knows the basics of computer security there is no need to have an antivirus program that clogs the system. Peridoic web checkups do just fine.
On another note, now that this software has lost its credability with the clergy (as CHP has advised members to ignore threat warnings dealing with this software) im willing to wager that many clergy members would be willing to ignore many future threat warnings with the fear that the progam will break some other essential application. The money spent on the licenses for norton would be better spent on education for the clergy so they can avoid these problems all together.
I'm not sure I agree with the comment that Norton A.V. was "essential software". I have always seemed to find a better, or at least far less intrusive, alternative to the Norton products. When the things that are intended to help you get in the way, they cease to be essential.
I've done the math, I know the odds, but I'm still disappointed when I don't win the lottery.
Jealous of their simple lifestyle, homemade liquor, and delicious honey.
...is an Anti-Norton virus.
After one of my users uttered that spoonerism the other day, I am more and more convinced it needs to happen.
...Chuck Norton Antivirus?
Not to mention that a few monestaries produce some amazing beers.
Symantec hates religious people...
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I'll bet services were shorter for a few weeks there.
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
How often would you have to update the subscription?
God uses a Mac.
If a bumper sticker says, it must be true!
Unleaded gasoline tanks today have an aperture size that prevents diesel nosels from fitting into the tank. This is meant to protect the occasional absent minded person (or complete noob user) from accidentally installing the wrong fuel into their tank and causing harm to their engines.
Same goes for antivirus software really. Experienced and knowledgable users can self protect themselves against computer virus infections but that doesnt mean everyone is like you. In the case of computer usage there are far more ignorant users (particularly with regards to security) than informed ones. I don't run AV software on my PC but I do tell my sister to run it and keep her signatures up to date. Why? Because she's liable to fall victim to all sorts of online tricks and schemes and download and install something she shouldn't. She happens to have a life and doesnt spend 8+ hours a day reading geek-zines like Slashdot. She uses her computers for a couple of hours a day and then goes about her business.
Yes there needs to be software out there to protect causal computer users from the ever changing array of tactics employed by spyware and virus authors.
Too many geeks want to find something for once in their miserable lives to be an elitest prick at, and ragging on ignorant computer users is one of them.
Did it only erase sermons bashing evolution? Isn't that a virus of sorts?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2006/03/13/mc afee-samenuk-microsoft-cx_cn_0313autofacescan11.ht ml
Signature-based virus scanners have ALWAYS been a joke. Basically, it's a technology that was barely good enough when the first one was written, and all that time we've been using it until something better comes along.
.ini file - to overrule it (OS "home" edition).
The real solution to virusses lies not in signature-based scanners, but in policing applications. The discontinued Thunderbyte AV (of DOS days) had the right idea. It scanned files for instructions that shouldn't be in normal programs, like an API call to format your hard disk. It had a list of exceptions (format.com etc.), but otherwise, it would complain loudly.
Nowadays, we can do much better. We have usernames, credentials, priviliges etc. Why don't programs run as separate users with separate priviliges? There is NO reason why Word (or openoffice for that matter) should be able to access every part of the registry or harddisk that the user running it can. Firefox should basically be restricted to making TCP connections and writing it's configuration, cache, and a download directory. The security model now allows it to write to c:\windows\system32 if you're logged in as administrator, even though it clearly has no business doing so.
Newly downloaded applications should be granted permission only to write to registry keys they themselves created, and files likewise. And if an app overstretches its default permissions, the OS should complain loudly and ask permission (OS "professional" edition), lookup a policy file (OS "corporate/enterprise" edition) or simply disallow it and require some sort of wizzardry - e.g. editing an
This doesn't require rocket science to implement, though it will break some stuff and force users to copy files from My Documents\Microsoft Office to My Documents\Firefox if they want to upload a document. Small price to pay, I say.
Of course Norton and McAfee suffer not just from being unreliable in detecting virusses, they also fuck up your OS so it won't work properly anymore, and are a bitch to uninstall. But the solution to that is simple; switch to another product. The fact that the other product would, again, be a signature based scanner is the lamentable part.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Norton is an anti-virus program. It makes perfect sense that it should impead the effectiveness of the most long-lived and devastating virus of all time: religion.
Don't mod me down becuase you disagree with me. Post a response explaining why you think religion gets a bad rap and why you think it's such a huge benefit to mankind. Moderating me down so no one can read what I and paulsgre wrote is chickenshit. You're abusing the system. Mod down the "first post" and GNAA trolls; not someone who you disagree with.
I hardly expected the Spanish Inquisition
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
norton stopped being essential when the length of the command names exceeded two characters.
Hmmm... I don't seem to see any version of Norton on my Gentoo box. My Fedora and RedHat boxes never had it either. My BSD boxes never had it. Essential? Hardly. Probably more "reluctantly required" for most users of Windows and Classic Mac OS. But to be honest, I had a Windows XP box that I never patched and kept behind a Linux firewall for two years. I only used Mozilla and later Firefox as the browser. I never got one infection. Not one. However, as soon as I plugged said device directly into my DSL line in the middle of an emergency, within seconds I got hit with something. (Can't remember what it was but it was common. Caused your XP box to give you an RPC error and then shutdown.)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
They take donations through the PlatePal (tm) church offering cash collection service.
Where were you when the voynix came?
What most amateur IT people don't understand is that there is a world of difference between Norton Antivirus, and Symantec Antivirus. As an IT professional who has helped neutralize viruses off of many computers, and who administers a Windows domain (don't hate me), I can say that Symantec Corporate Antivirus works great, is centrally managed, and does what it is supposed to and no more. I've used to for 5 years now and it has successfully prevented numerous virus outbreaks that would have greatly disrupted the Windows workstations I am paid to administer. If this were a Linux/Mac desktop environment, there would be no need to run an antovirus. But there is critical software that is available only for Windows. And this is what I am paid to keep running.
No. It has been a sad joke for years. The fact that so many IT professionals actually choose norton is a testament that a ton of IT professionals are complete idiots. Naturally, in most cases it is thrust upon them by a director of IT who couldn't find his ass with both hands, a map, a gps, and a sextant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
each genesis?
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Might I suggest Chimay Blue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi%C3%A8res_de_Chimay ?
Norton was once an essential application. Is it turning into a joke?
.... (AZT anyone?)
Ans: Yes.
However, Norton seems to be playing catch up with its OSX counterpart. Norton Systemworks (Utilities) became a joke for Mac users years ago now at the start of OSX having been an essential app for OS7/8/9. In fact there is no surer way of guaranteeing an OSX 'nuke&pave' situation than running Nortons and getting it to fix something. It's kind of like a medecine that kills
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Stopped using Symantec starting in 2003, just bloatware.MacAfee is even worse..
Hallelujah brother the world just might be saved from another computer generated, prolix diatribe this Sunday. Imagine vicars having to come up with a sermon from their heart rather than a pull-down list of appropriate incantations.
/. congregation?
Norton needs to port this feature to sermon-writing applications for all religions. Oh, and political speech-writing software too.
Can I get an 'Amen' from the
So, tell us something we don't know.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Remember when the name Peter Norton meant something (good)? Not any more. I've used NAV for years but finally got fed up with the increasing amount of bloat, the way it bogged everything down, and the occasional bluescreen. I was never hit with a virus that it missed, but it was just such a pig.
I switched over to NOD32 which is tiny, fast, almost no system impact, and never takes down the entire machine. It's never even crashed as far as I can tell. It's supposed to detect better than Norton too, though I have so few hits I can't really compare the rates.
After this I visited my parents and stripped everything Norton off their 1.8ghz Celeron XP Home system and installed NOD32 instead. It's like a whole new machine! My parents are still gushing about how fast I made their computer when all I did was take the millstone off its back.
I know NOD32 is kind of pricey (the software is free, the subscriptions are $30 a year though) for some people, but if you can afford it it'll make a huge difference in your computing experience. And you won't be feeding more money to the Symantec mediocrity machine.
I have the beta of Microsoft Defender on my computer. I also have a copy of Norton Anti-Virus that I got a license to because I was in the Military (DOD pays for unlimited downloads for even personal computers). Now at least everyday I get a pop-up warning that Microsoft Defender is trying to change something that Norton doesn't want it to change and that Norton blocked it. I don't get an option to allow the change and I don't have an option to ignore the problem. I figured that they would fix this with updates but it has been happening for months. Is anyone else affected?
Maybe we should give Norton a break, afterall religion is a virus.
What are these strange things you speak of?
/dev/null
find / -name \*norton\* 2>
Nope, nothing. Can't be very essential.
Deleted
I was experiencing the "window's crud", and bought a (bundled) value pack of Norton Utilities (tm) along with other stuff. I took the default installation, which was a sad mistake. It installed Norton's "GoBack".
To make the long (painful) story short, GoBack prevented me from logging into my machine (it interferes with the boot sequence). When i followed the directions on Symmantec's web site for correcting the problem, GoBack corrupted the master boot record (MBR) of my notebook's hard drive. Brilliant! I had a pair of hard deadlines for deliverables, and my machine was useless. Their tech support wrote me an email which said (honest to god)
More brilliance! I suppose i could have paid $30+ per hour to have their telephone staff tell me how to get their crap off my system, but i thought i'd already wasted enough money with them. I managed data recovery on the drive (sector scanned the 60 gig drive, then reassembled the links) to find that GoBack made (literally) hundreds and hundreds of copies of thousands of the same files across my drive (which made recovery yet more annoying). In all, it cost me about 4 working days.Which is all the more annoying since The Utilities did nothing to help with the Window's crud.
AVOID NORTON UTILITIES LIKE THE PLAGUE.
The above are my own personal opinions based upon my own painful experiences. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employers, clients, lawyers, etc.
I've been waiting for this allusion...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
So how is labeling sermon-writing software as "bad" not a Good Thing (TM)?? Sounds like it is stamping out crappy SPAM to me....
"But this one goes to 11!"
I had my own run-in with a Norton false positive. For some reason, my newly acquired copy of NAV took exception to a file on my desktop called "Norton Antivirus 2003 keygen.exe". IIRC it labelled it as "malware\keygen". I checked the file with several web AV tools and it was clean. What could the problem have been?
P.s., Avast FTW!
Norton has long since been a joke.
Any anti-virus with a 256mb+ footprint is a joke.
The Internet Security product suite is beyond a joke.
Any firewall with 2,000 registry modifications is beyond a joke.
Symantec corporate edition is pretty good at what it does.
AVG isn't resource hungry, but has relatively poor detection rates. It is free software, though.
Most people don't get rare, morphing, 0-day viruses though, so detection rates aren't always of utmost importance.
NOD32 has a memory footprint of 10mb. It also is always one of the top three highest detection rates in the industry. (Norton never makes top three)
Any questions?
...for the congregations.
Every cloud has a silver lining, etc.
you had me at #!
I work for Symantec. I'm typing this on a Symantec computer. From a Symantec network. In the office. Surrounded by thought-deprived Symantedroids with little yellow swirlies tatooed on their foreheads.
So listen very closely:
Norton is shit. Shitty software shittily implemented on a shitty operating system. It used to be kind of kewl, but now it's a shit interface, with shit performance, and shit virus definitions that cost a shitload of money to update. Implemented on a shitbag platform because its missing some basic shit in the process controls. So we piled more shit on top of the shit that was already there, so now the shit attack surface still smells like shit, only it's bigger. The underlying pile of shit keeps getting bigger because Microsoft is apparently drilling and pumping to recycle old shit, so we have to keep making our pile of shit bigger to cover it, only some of the old shit keeps poking through. And our shit is updated only when the shit hits the fan. No one even knows their way around the pile of shit anymore because it's become an immense mountain of shit with rolling hills of shit versions, rivers of shit updates, shit swamps of shitty support and peaks of horseshit management tools that allow people to pretend that they understand all this shit.
Buy a Mac. Patch the OS. And don't install shitty antivirus software.
If you think Anti-Virus software is not essential, I'd like you to go to a large college campus and connect to their network. Without a firewall and AV software you will probably have some nasty worms, viruses and trojans in about 1 hour. I have my computer set to scan everyday while I am at class. It finds at least 2 viruses a week. I use firefox, zone alarm, and keep windows updated. I also turn the comp at night, but stuff still gets through. I just wish people on campus would get AV software, the school gives it away for free because the situation is that bad. I have spent hours going around the dorm putting AVG or Norton(free from school) on friend's machines because they were completely trashed by worms and viruses(I usually have to reinstall everything first). On a side note turn off file sharing on your hard drives people. Everyone on campus can access all your files. And whoever the owner of "Matt's Comp" is, you may want to rethink putting all your passwords and usernames in a file labeled "passwords.doc" in your My Documents folder...
...religion is spyware of a sort. At least, it's viral in nature. Maybe Symantic wasn't that far wrong...
How do you know you never got hit with a virus, if you don't run anti-virus software? Some viruses are sneaky and steal personal information, avoiding detection at all cost and then package up and send such personal information out through a trusted application such as IE or FireFox.
The one in a tutu?
I couldnt deal with paying $50 or whatever for it after rebates, and then having all these bloated applications bundled with it, taking most of the cpu/ram resources on top of it. Plus the fact it seems Norton doesnt work as intended anymore made me switch over to AntiVir http://www.freeav.com/ Maybe not the best, but it runs quietly in the background, updates once a day and seems pretty efficient for me.
I'm agnostic, but from what I know of God - he is all knowing. So he already not only knows my card numbers but their PINs too!
Last time I installed Lavasoft's Adaware program it flagged expat.dll -- a *very* common C XML reading library (from Jim Clark no less) -- as spyware. Google says SpySweeper (whatever the hell that is) does the same. That's a serious problem for my company because we distribute the dll with our software.
.dll as spyware!". If I ever write a spyware program it's going to use a .dll named "kernel32.dll".
Just lazy programming: "hmmm...this virus uses a dll named expat.dll! Instead of investigating the thing, let's just flag the
Shame on you... putting your hands on the students like that...
(apologies to Monty Python)
First Vicar: As I scan my computer for sinful programs...
(Cut to bishop and vicars at doorway.)
Bishop: The anti-virus, vic! Don't run the anti-virus!
(Cut back to vicar.)
First Vicar: (Scanning in process)
(The computer explodes. Vicar's sermons disappear in smoke. Cut to close-up of the bishop.)
Bishop: We was too late. The Reverend Norton's writings bit the ceiling.
ShoutingMan.com
Because Stalin was right, all bigots deserve being executed in a painful way.
I've found that Norton and McAfee are the source of more computer problems than any other software, including Windows itself. They are bug-ridden, invasive, and wasteful of resources. About 50% of the "service calls" I do consist of replacing Norton/McAfee with AVG and then typing "msconfig" to turn off all the other garbage they've got installed in their tray. Then they say "You fixed my computer! It's like brand-new! You must be some kind of god damn genius!"
At least since Norton got gobbled up by Symantec.
Windows/Norton/AdAware/McAffee etc. have been a risible joke for years. Everything out of Redmond (except MS Office) is insecure, feeble crapware.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
The real question: "Is it still a joke?"
I used to work for Veritas supporting NetBackup and still use the product on a day-to-day basis. Every time I here someone refer to it as Symantec NetBackup I cry a little. Have Symantec had *any* good press recently?
I know because I intentionally ran a virus scan on the box just before I ditched it. Came up completely clean. Not only under Norton, and McAfee. But also under ClamAV and Grisoft's free AV scanner as well. It's easy to keep a Windows PC free of viruses if you know what you're doing. And you don't need AV to do it. I specifically did this two year experiment to prove a point to a co-worker.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Read the article, folks. The software has the liturgy and the readings. (I'd assume it has all the Propers, meaning those parts of the worship service that change based on the day on the liturgical calendar.) That means it has nothing to do with sermon preparation, but instead with preparation of the liturgy (what most lay folks call "the service"). See http://www.vislit.com/articles/intro.html for more info. Poor techie writer didn't understand his subject matter. (A liturgy, for instance, is not "delivered," while a sermon is.) Also, all the (predictable) jokes re: "sermon = virus" reflect the same misunderstanding. (Of course, the Visual Liturgy folks seem to be pitching their software towards folks who don't exactly have a strong grasp of technology, too.)
Come on, don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel about it.
He's at it again!!!
"Norton was once an essential application. Is it turning into a joke?"
[+] yes (tagging beta)
Thank you, please drive through.
Then != than you morons.
I used to use Norton a lot. Over the last 4 years or so, I have come to realize that Norton causes so many more problems that the very few it actually solves that I too remove Norton when setting up a new computer. Symantec products are now way too buggy to be trusted IMHO, the better proof: unistalling them is sometimes as painfull as removing malware.
dude, how could you make it through the lameness filter?
At least NAV didn't delete all their pr0n.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
At work I've disabled norton on my pc as if I don't nothing works, its set to update at 12 am (not pm)for some stupid reason so just before lunch everyones (except mine for some reason :) ) pc blue screens on update days
I've tried explaining to my pointy haired boss that Norton crashes our pc's because of a conflict with our inventory SW and nortons update mechanism but he's got as much of a clue as dilberts cartoon boss
He's supposed to be our IT guy, but usually makes it worse when he tries to 'fix' things, anyway rant over. I'm enjoying quietly converting people to firefox and thunderbird and have recieved lads of requests to 'speed up my computer' which usually means uninstalling all sorts of cr*p.
Today the big boss asked me to sort out outlook express which I did by swopping it for an 'upgraded' version (i.e.thunderbird), which he now thinks is great so things are looking up!
... is an exorcist. Satans possessed this piece of software! Lord give us the power to protect our computers from this evil!
When has Symantec/Norton EVER been "essential" or not a joke. Please.
Dear Black Hat Pirates,
We'd like to thank you for your "I'm sure my antivirus software will warn me about EVERYTHING bad on my machine, like the advertisements tell me it will" attitude. It demonstrates that you apparently place waaaaay too much trust in antivirus software, especially the latest and not-so-greatest. Hopefully you'll get infected by something written by your own associates when Norton doesn't catch it, and that will get you off our backs.
Sincerely,
The Rest of Us
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
I'm not sure the false positives could do anything but further amplify that anti-virus is more of a false sense of security than real threat protection.
80% miss rate
Of course if you're still surfing with Windows you're at risk anyway.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
without religion, what would become of war? or hate? How would world leaders control the masses? Honestly, without religion most people would be nice to each other because they'd have to -- there would be no higher being that would forgive them for their inhumanity to other humans. People would have to make more of an effort...
/gam/
Now, *with* religion, you can slack off, cheat, lie, steal, kill, covet, etc, and still be forgiven regardless of how much you hurt those around you. You can waste all of the Earth's resources without concern because one day you'll be with your God and that's really all that matters. I mean, this Earth is temporary, right? People really don't matter so much as what those people believe in, right?
I forgot what I was saying... I think I was agreeing with you or something...
anyways...
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
omniscient. If seeing and knowing everything isn't spyware I don't know what is.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
some years ago NAV found borland c++ 5.02 suspicious...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Suddenly the last 30 years of Anglican Church history make sense. They aren't becoming Unitarians... their computers are infected with spyware!
Bob,
Due to unauthorized dissemination of trademarked, patented and copyrighted Company Secrets(tm), I'm sorry to announce that you are being promoted into a management position. If you're lucky, they won't give you stock options. Please clean out your office and report to Human Resources.
Joe Smith
Human Resources Directory
Symantec, Inc.
I thought irrational hatred of religion was the one thing that bound the many threads of Slashdot together? :)
That surprises me a bit. When I used DOS in the old days, software produced by Norton was always of high quality, maybe flagships in the DOS world. Norton Commander was very popular, it could be considered as the file manager, and Norton Utilities was a musthave, with lots of system administration tools and useful programs.
It seems as when they started to produce MS Windows tools, they lost their leading position in the market. Norton Commander for Windows didn't catch on, AFAIK, but that's maybe because Windows already had its own file manager. Norton Commander became superfluous. So, when they started producing anti-virus software I believe they were rated as some of the best, at least in the beginning.
It is quite interesting to see how a big software company with great products and good reputation can be degraded into second-class software in just a few years.
I've tried AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and one other one I cannot remember the name of, and no matter what, it will not go away. Both AdAware and S&D detect and identify it, but telling them to fix/heal it does no good.
Nice shit analogy, Ricky.
There are a number of bullets that destroy data and the credibility of anti-malware sofware. They are * Human error, * The price of backwards compatibility, * Cooincidental matching of signatures, * Virus mutation, * Being famous enough to attract scrutiny that reveals weaknesses or just plain arrogant claims that attract challengers, * The bad habit of implicitly applying fame instead of shame to virus writers. No software is immune to being hit by one of these bullets sooner or later unless you are running an etch-a-sketch laptop. Human error we all know, but with the hundreds of thousands of virus signatures to search, it is bound to happen that some legit software would have a sequence of bytes that match a signature at times. Its sheer probability. I won't fault Nav for that. Major AV softwares are big targets for those seeking fame that don't care if its infamy if they can write a virus that rides on the weaknesses of a major piece of software or Windows itself. Arrogant claims also attract unwanted attention. On my work machine, I had an AV software that claimed to scan all incoming traffic and claimed to block the incoming threats before they got onto my machine, failed to protect my machine when I got a message from someeone who appeared to be a friend, who knew the answer to my question, but the link they sent ended up downloading 400 viruses, all of which this AV corporate edition detected AFTER they were installed on my machine! These weren't new viruses, but had been in the AV signature file for ages. Obviously, some low life took it as a challenge to find a weakness in this software, to prove that their software did not provide the bulletproof security they claimed. I avoid the big four major brands of antivirus software in favor of one less known that uses the signatures from one of the major four. The best protection against viruses is the brain of the user who is computer saavy. I used HijackThis to remove those 400 viruses. I installed it, I googled the UID of every process I did not recognize until I had eradicated every virus on the system. Up to a few weeks ago, I had and used NAV 2005, but it kept starting disabled because it did not play nice with my audology sound card software or vice versa. Eventually, a virus got through, even though I hadn't opened any email and again, HijackThis was a quick rescue. Now when I get email where I feel I must check out the link I suspect I'll boot into Linux and browse to the site. The biggest problem with these AV softwares, is that many of them do not allow for the creation of a boot CD (Floppies are far too unreliable and a boot floppy can't be made for NT and seemingly for XP.) where the user can boot into a clean environment where the chances of a virus being active and stealthing are minimized during a scan. Without this capability, a running virus simply re-creates the offending files after they are deleted or on reboot. This however becomes a problem when a server cannot be brought down for a thorough untainted scan. This means one should have backup servers. Ie, if you aren't willing to invest in redundancy, one must risk paying the price. Microsoft help presents instructions for creating a clean boot with msconfig but there are two problems with that. There can be no guarantee of a clean boot on a compromised boot media, and step 2 of 12 caused my XP to think it was booting up on a different machine when it was on the same exact machine it was running on before I rebooted! I ended up having to reactivate windows! Since I have a cd with only SP1 this could have been desasterous to try a repair using that CD. Sooner or later, with all the proliferation of malware, we are going to hit a critical mass where legit software will be mistaken more and more for virus, and scanning will turn into a bigger and bigger hassle. Backwards compatibility is a luxury that comes with a price and that price is being limited in how one can respond to threats and security holes. It seems that the next big step might be to have compatibility layers, where an OS ca
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
I would have agreed to you up until V10. As a consultant I administer MANY windows domains, and I've had a significant issues with V10 that I never had with earlier versions at a number of customers, especially on the server (the worst place). I'm using Trend Micro SMB now... and couldn't be happier. They've even built in automatic removal of other A/V software (including Symantec) into their own client installer. My only gripes is that their spam filtering stinks (so does Symantec's), and it doesn't support IMAP at the client.
-R
Works just fine in OpenOffice though! ;)
OpenOffice's equanimity is similarly unchanged if you do inserts from the Necronomicon. (User sanity is appreciably affected if you do, but not so much as merely caused by using MSWord.)
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"But when my oldest son just dropped dead right in front of me, I knew we had to get out of there."
WTH?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Trying to link a client's Access tables to an offsite SQL Server yesterday.
Guess what? Norton AV's Office Plugin was blocking the link table dialog.
You'd click on Link Tables, get the dialog, navigate to your ODBC data sources, click the dropdown box for the ODBC databsses, click that, the dialog box then just vanishes, no errors, no nothing. Simply wouldn't function.
Four hours trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Finally from a Google search in a MySQL thread where somebody was trying to ODBC from Access to MySQL, somebody mentions the Norton AV problem
Norton is CRAP!
Anybody who uses it is out of their minds. Dump that junk. Put those morons out of business.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What!! Sot you...you.....deahvil....
I used to swear by NAV and Systemworks because they pretty much were idiotproof, friendly apps that did most of what was asked of them, but they started getting bloaty as all hell.
Starting with NIS 2005, I've had customers with laptops that WILL NOT access the internet, and when you uninstall NIS, the PC won't boot. I've had NAV do exactly the same. NOD32 or Kaspersky are full-on the sheezy. TrendMicro and Panda seem quite fine by me, and McAfee, though I never thought I'd say this, is better than NAV.
Hell, avast! is better than NAV and it's a pile-o-crap.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
They always say that God is all knowing! Obviously Norton is just trying to keep God from spying on you!
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
... but this is the sort of thing where the open source community could get in and help move these guys off Windows. How hard would it be to write a workalike of Visual Liturgy?
Virus name: God
Also known as: Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh, YHWH
Spyware: Yes, omnicient.
Damage potential: Armageddon
Prevalence: Ubiquitous
Stealth: Yes (even it's existence is debated)
Threat level: Critical
Notes: This omnipotent entity creates a world by force of will, and then waits until the end times to trigger the armageddon payload.
Shit, ... HELL YEA! Man how could anyone see this as a bad thing? The last thing these people is help spreading their hate mongering and lies. Let them use pen and paper. They want your thoughts regressed a few thousand years, let the way they do it be regressed as well.
-Polyhead-
Here we have a story pointing out where Symantec fucked up pretty bad, and most of what I see is anti-religious zealotry, just because the people that got screwed were religious? I'm no religious person, but you zealots are as bad as the people you hate so much. Symantec is the problem here, not the churches.
Go fuck a tree, zealots. Leave the rational discussion to the grownups.
FC Closer
This happens all the time, with all antivirus software. Signature-based or heuristic or both, they make mistakes. This sounds like a small mistake - it's much worse when you trigger off a widely used application or OS file.
Sure, this is one of the dangers of any malware detection software, but how else would you do it? You need to identify dangerous software using the smallest possible identifier or behavior. Sure, you could have a whole virus-library of malicious code in your detection system, but you would use a ton of memory and disk space to do it and the product would be unusable.
Same for heuristics - you want to exercise, in a pseudo-processing environment, every function in every piece of software on your machine to make sure it doesn't try anything nasty? You would lose most of your cpu cycles to heuristic analysis, waiting several minutes for a program to start executing *your* instructions after the malware analysis completes. Good luck with that project.
With 95% of the world's computers running Windows, everybody needs antivirus software. Unfortunate, and largely MSFT's fault, but there we are. NAV, SAV, McAfee, Grisoft, Trend, Sophos, etc. - they all have their pro's and con's.
Sure, it would be great to have an efficient anti-virus system that didn't depend on too-simple heuristics or too-hard-to-maintain signatures. Does someone know how to do that? There's a big AV market out there. Go ahead, build it.
Every time Someone asks a question in the slashdot summary, it always gets three tags, "yes", "no", "maybe".
Interestingly enough this one only got yes. You heard it here first, people. Norton is officially a joke. (who am I kidding, everybody knew that)
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
Is in yer ass. He's talking about way long ago...
.exe's, that did great things. There was a direct hex/ascii editor for files AND raw disk sectors. There was the first practical unerase/undelete for files and dirs and much more - a superb hacker's toolkit, everything you needed except debug (and that came w/DOS).
-- You probably weren't even born yet --
Before there was Spyware, before there were viruses, before the Mac-centric (at the time) Symantec bought out and pussified it, there was:
{brief fanfare}
"The Norton Utilities"
The finest and mightiest system utils evar. They had a nice collection of about 15 programs, all tiny
Peter Norton was a god to us then. The moment Symantec bought up all his stuff they completely hosed them, they probably didn't know any better being Mac heads, but they drove what was the strongest techie software franchise in the PC world right into the toilet.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I used to use Norton AntiVirus religiously. I recently uninstalled it and I won't be going back unless something drastic changes. Every new release lately has more and more popups which are seemingly impossible to disable. The thing basically spams you with messages and it's pretty clear they're intended to bring your attention on the program so you'll be more likely to pay for your yearly update. They're afraid antivirus has become something that sits in your tray and you ignore all year while it does its job silently ... and that software that behaves like that doesn't inspire users to shell out their yearly upgrade / subscription cash hastily enough. So they make all sorts of blinky popups to remind you that you're using Symantec Norton AntiVirus and it is Monitoring Your Computer and Status is Green and all sorts of shazz I really don't need to know. Tell me when there's a virus and shut up otherwise.
Considering that religion is opium for the masses... may be this is intentional behavior.
...No matter how odd the task, eventually, you will find an application made to accomplish it.
*Googles "generate 800000 lines of 'you suck Bob'"*
Great Intellect...
They BOTH are junk. Norton 'forgets' its password and becomes impossible to remove within windows. Just deleting it makes the whole operating system unstable and prone to blue screen of deaths. McAfee has become nagware insamuch if you do not buy all the parts of its 'security suite' you will be constantly nagged until either you do or you get tired of the low performance, high overhead and other issues and try to remove it.
THEN the REAL fun begins. Both of these programs require 'online activation', meaning that unknown software is installed when you access their website. There is no guarantee that these programs are not cooperating with some government or corporation somewhere to the extent that somewhere in the millions of lines of code in these applications may lurk just about any kind of malware, trojans, spyware, informware. Online activation means that if some game screws up your system, like 'Lock-On Gold' with its sly background installation of StarForce DRM, then after re-installing the operating system these online activations mean a huge needless and time wasting extra onerous duty of redoing each and every one of the tiresome things one at a time. At some time in the not too distant future, online 're-activations' will become either not free, limited, or both, adding a further layer of frustration to windows users. In addition, requirements to 'online activate' mean that you were not sold the whole application when you foolishly plunked your money down for their less than worthless 'limited warrantees'. This is a shame because Norton was once a good set
of utilities when it had fill secure deleters, disk volume table of contents and FAT editors, etc....really served the computing public. But that was before microsoft 'windows' and its attendant corruption arrived and made computers inscrutable. Before that, software came with real manuals that described how it worked, along with advice on how to customize it in many cases. For much of this, we have ex VP Al Gore to thank. His DMCA was the icing on the tombstone of user's true control of thier machines.
That is unless you move over to linux!
Oh no it's the Symantecs antichrist!
A site cowboyneal will like http://www.freewebs.com/atpa/
Well, you could say that priests and religion are indeed spyware, they want to collect personal information, that's why they hear confessions. Also, religion spreads like a virus.
At least that is what the local ultra-libertarian and jewry political party SZDSZ preaches here in Hungary. They are extremely anti-clerical and want all youth to abuse drugs, engage in homosexual relations and bilge drink as well as relativism in education (teacher better not dare to criticize lazy and anti-social students or punish them or they'll be fired). They hate christian priests, but support destructive sects, like the scientology company.
Teenagers and yuppies are indeed liking these messages and thus highly pro-SZDSZ. They are deeply scared of the political right coming back to government and pushing the priests to power. Even though the SZDSZ is totally incompetent and destructive and the economy is in ruins, the population has been hyped into such a priest-phobia by the liberal and jewish capital controlled media that any change political is impossible.
I would say it is the liberalism and moral relativity which is spyware and viral and we need to do something against it.
Although I can obtain Symantec's products gratis from Indiana University, I haven't used it in about 4 years. I have yet to see any malware that NAV will successfully remove.
My Windows machines (as well as any that I'm asked to repair) all run ClamWin http://www.clamwin.com/. It's every bit as good, and GPL'd too!
"The bad machine doesn't know he's a bad machine."
It's been pathetic for years.
It has been a joke for a long time!!! I worked for McAfee in about 1998, and they were a joke that far back as well. Hopefully one day, an antivirus that actually does not depend on viruses being reported or found in the wild will come along, and kill off the crappy stuff we have now-a-days.
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Some people think AVG is an good option. AVG misses more trojans and virusses than McAfee and Norton. So AVG is an bigger joke. On one of my test systems AVG missed an 3 year old trojan. Symantec found it and cleaned it. /offtopic
If you don't want Symantec to remove your keygens, the just change the options on what to scan.
NIS version 2002 8.0 Excellent
NIS version 2004 7.6 Very Good
NIS version 2005 7.0 Very Good
NIS version 2006 6.0 Good
http://reviews.search.com/search?q=Norton+Internet +Security&tag=srch&submit=Go!
hmmm... anybody see a trend here? But how could anyone in there right mind ever call NIS Exellent or even Very good?
Prediction
NIS version 2010 1.0 Holy Moly This Reeks!