I use Trend Micro. A much "leaner" program that catches things Norton does not, and it doesn't try to take over your computer.
"A critical software bug has been discovered in several of the most widely used anti-virus programs. It could be exploited to take control of a computer or to steal information..."
Irony works in mysterious ways.
I dumped Norton for McAfee earlier this year and have found it superior in virus/spyware detection and does not slow my computer down...Norton failed on both counts.
norton software turned to crap when peter sold out to symantec
See also:
Symantec, McAfee Battle Flaws
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1545631/posts
Symantec is junk. While it has a nice library and catches a lot of viruses, dware and spyware when it runs, the simplest adware can disable the thing and make reinstallation an nours long project.
As a result it doesn't work when you need it too.
Discussed here too
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1545631/posts
Went from McAfee to AVG and have never looked back.
McAfee allowed a trojan in on my home PC and I gave up on it after that.
ping
Anti-Virus
AVG
bump
You decide:
AV vendors split over FBI Trojan snoops:
Keystroke loggerheads
By John Leyden
Published Tuesday 27th November 2001 18:44 GMT
Antivirus vendors are at loggerheads over whether they should include in their software packages detection for a Trojan horse program reportedly under development by the FBI.
A keystroke logging Trojan, called Magic Lantern, will enable investigators to discover break PGP encoded messages sent by suspects under investigation, MSNBC reports. By logging what a suspect types, and transmitting this back to investigators, the FBI could use Magic Lantern to work out a suspect's passphrase. Getting a target's private PGP keyring is easy in comparison, and with the two any message can be broken.
MSNBC quotes unnamed sources who says that Magic Lantern could be sent to a target by email or planted on a suspect's PC by exploiting common operating system vulnerabilities.
Although unconfirmed, the reports are been taken seriously in the security community, and are consistent with the admitted use of key-logging software in the investigation of suspected mobster Nicodemo Scarfo. In that case, FBI agents obtained a warrant to enter Scarfo's office and install keystroke logging software on his machine.
Magic Lantern, which would be an extension of the Carnivore Internet surveillance program, takes the idea one step further by enabling agents to place a Trojan on a target's computer without having to gain physical access.
The suggested technique creates a clutch of legal, ethical and technical issues. Greater powers in the Patriot Act, which Congress is considering, may allow the tool to be used. But what if it was modified for use by hackers?
And antivirus vendors are mulling over the rights and wrongs of putting Magic Lantern on their virus definition list.
Eric Chien, chief researcher at Symantec's antivirus research lab, said that provided a hypothetical keystroke logging tool was used only by the FBI, then Symantec would avoid updating its antivirus tools to detect such a Trojan.
Symantec is yet to hear back from the FBI on its enquiries about Magic Lantern.
"If it was under the control of the FBI, with appropriate technical safeguards in place to prevent possible misuse, and nobody else used it - we wouldn't detect it," said Chien. "However we would detect modified versions that might be used by hackers."
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, disagrees. He says it it wrong to deliberately refrain from detecting the virus, because its customers outside the US would expect protection against the Trojan. Such a move also creates an awkward precedent.
Cluley adds: "What if the French intelligence service, or even the Greeks, created a Trojan horse program for this purpose? Should we ignore those too?"
AVG is the best I've found so far. Much easier on system resources too. Norton is garbage.
Cisco Security Agent is better.
This is ridiculous "the sky is falling" journalism at its worst; don't get caught up in it Freepers. It's a nice "bash-a-successful-company" tone that belongs on socialist/commie Slashdot but not here.
(1) There is no known public exploit of this vulnerability. And Symantec has released a heuristic (signature) that detects it, so if you are using Symantec software in the first place, you are probably getting the most up-to-date update so now you are OK.
(2) if you are a consumer, you would get infected only if you interact and download a malicous RAR file, which is a not-very-popular file compression algorithm. And for it to "take over your computer", the malicious file would have to be written to successfully execute code on you PC/laptop, which is no easy feat.
(3) if your company's or ISP's Gateways are using Symantec's email security products, the admins could/would have put a block on RAR files until Symantec came out with the heuristic, which was a span of less than 36 hours.
(4) Symantec Antivirus Corporate Editions 8 & 9 are not affected; that makes up about 90% of the corporate pie.
Move along folks; nothing to see here.
And shame on you Freepers who got duped :-)
Any other questions, please email me at iggy_e@yahoo.com. As you can guess, I know something about this.
What a royal screwup.
Thanks for this article.
ping
I use ClamWin - Free