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A Bad Week for Symantec

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the seen-better-days dept.

Evan Hughes writes "NeoSmart Technologies has published a scathing editorial regarding 3 high-profile mistakes by Symantec Corp. — all in less than a week. In what seems to be a string of stupid mistakes culminating in the infection of CNN-parent Turner Broadcasting Systems by Rinbot— a virus dedicated to the eradication of Symantec from the known world."

9 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. With all due respect... by devphaeton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ....in my experience modern Symantec products such as Norton Internet Security is the most malicious, but successful form of malware ever. It actually gets people to pay money for the product, and in a lot of cases, pay other people to install it and keep it on their system.

    I'm so glad I moved out of software maintenance and into hardware maintentance. Now I just wipe harddrives clean as a whistle and make sure the hardware works. Such a load off!

    --


    do() || do_not(); // try();
  2. Why is this is only news now? by winkydink · · Score: 4, Interesting

    because CNN is infected?

    1. Estimates are 100-150 million machines are currently part of botnets
    2. Loss estimates exceed 200 billion annually on a global basis
    3. Over 80% of all spam comes from botnets

    Yes, I can cite. Or you can Google. They are all easy to find.

    This is a HUGE problem that is, in many ways, like spam was in 1996 or 1997. The technical community acknowledges it, the average consumer has no clue, and, left unaddressed the problem and associated looses will get much, much worse.

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  3. Re:So this is kinda obvious, but.... by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you'd ever been the person responsible for updating the Symantec Antivirus client, you would not be so quick to judge. LiveUpdate only handles scanning engine updates and virus definitions. Anything else is a huge nightmare.

    I don't like Symantec products because they make the life of a sysadmin *more difficult*.

    --
    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
  4. Astroturfing by jotok · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Symantec has seen quite a bit of negative publicity in the past year on slashdot.

    I have to wonder how much of it is simply astroturfing by disgruntled former employees? When there's a negative op/ed piece on a "software development and security research" website where none of the SQL even works, I just have to wonder if some no-talent assclown is pissed off because he lost his helpdesk or HR job.

    1. Re:Astroturfing by swordgeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

      OK, there's no doubt that Turner is pretty incompetent for not fixing this hole with a patch that's been out for most of a year.

      But at the same time, I have to ask how incompetent a company that writes security software can be, when their own code is written so as to allow this type of exploit.

      Furthermore, I've had quite a bit of experience with Symantec over the past few years. I've been using Veritas products for a decade and change (Netbackup and Volume Manager primarily), and know them very well. Once in a while, I'll come up against a bug and phone Veritas for support/workarounds/whatever. For years they weren't top notch, but they were decent and consistent.

      Since Symantec took over, support has fallen through the bottom of the toilet. Their help desk is driven by 'time-to-close,' and actual technical experts are no longer brought in for difficult cases. Bug reports are not even accepted anymore! (Well they'll _take_ the bug report, but won't give you a bug ID to track it with.)

      Furthermore, they've started to crank up the version release numbers so that they can promise support for two versions, but only support products for two years from initial release. TWO YEARS FROM RELEASE!!! That's completely unacceptable even in the home PC marketplace, let alone in an enterprise environment, where a product rollout may take over a year.

      So yesterday I went to install the newly-free version of Storage Foundation, because I needed to migrate some data from an old system (flawlessly running vxvm 3.5) to a new one, where we'd then move it to ZFS and be done with Veritas for good. The installer put 40 packages on my newly built Solaris 10 system (11/06 release), but failed to actually install the volume manager! After screwing around with it for a while, I gave up and went to uninstall it. The uninstaller hung in kernel space, and for twelve hours did nothing but couldn't be killed.

      I don't care about any axes that people have to grind. Symantec is an incompetent company, and DESERVES all of those people holding grudges against them. I'll be glad to see them die horribly.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  5. First thing I Uninstall is Symantec by flyingfsck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Whenever I have to fix a screwed up PC, MsAfee or Symantec is disabled by the malicious code. So, I always uninstall whatever is on the machine and install something else like AVG or ClamWin.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  6. No sweat off my nose.... by purduephotog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... Every machine that comes to me for service has one requirement: No Norton. Take norton off, and people are *amazed* at how much faster their machines run.

    I substitute Free-av.com for Norton- better infection detection, less memory overhead, free (with the option of buying a license- I usually guilt them into doing it), and nightly upgrades.

  7. Can you say AVAST? by rizzo320 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Although they may hold on to the enterprise market, why even bother with Norton AntiVirus or Internet Security when you can get Avast AntiVirus Personal edition for free! http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html/

    No, I don't work for them, or own stock. They've even updated it for Vista. The cost? Register for a free serial number every 14 months.

    Comodo firewall http://www.comodo.com/ is nice free step up for those who think they need something more than Windows firewall.

    In the year 2007, there is really no need for a consumer to pay for a product from Symantec/Norton, McAfee, or any other security software vendor that has been fleecing us for the last several years.

  8. Re:No great loss by Radon360 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, somewhere in 1990, Peter Norton sold things to Symantec. They (Symantec) continued to associate themselves with Peter Norton up until 2001 or so. About that time is the consensus that things went downhill. I'm not certain how much involvement Norton had with Symantec up until that point, but I'm willing to speculate that when the two parted companies, that's when Symantec began their transformation into selling the crap they do now.

    Gosh, I miss the good ol' days of Norton Utilities and the like...in DOS nonetheless. Now there was a powerful piece of software that was truly easy to use. The UI actually showed you some shred of respect that you knew what you were doing.