Posted on 12/18/2006 1:53:03 AM PST by Zakeet
SAN FRANCISCO - A computer worm is attacking some business PCs through a flaw in antivirus software by Symantec Corp., a security company warned Friday.
EEye Digital Security, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., said the worm, dubbed "Big Yellow," began attacking some computer systems on Thursday — seven months after eEye first discovered the flaw.
Symantec released a patch to address the flaw in May, but it's up to its corporate customers to install it. Officials at the Cupertino, Calif.-based security software company said Friday it had so far received three reports of systems affected by the worm.
"It is definitely a new worm, and it is looking for vulnerable systems, but we're not seeing any evidence of a significant outbreak or infection," said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec's security response unit.
Big Yellow enters machines through a security hole in the corporate version of Symantec's antivirus software. Once infected with the worm's "bot" program, a hacker can use it as a way to connect with other computers for malicious attacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
SUSE Linux is now running on two of them, Red Hat on another. To hell with it all.
I use Avast and Spyware Sweeper and like the job that both of them do.
Wuh???
Not only is Symantec software junk, their user support sucks as well.
Where do I get these programs? I HATE SYMANTIC!!!
"Where do I get these programs? I HATE SYMANTIC!!!"
www.avast.com
They don't pay enough money to keep their good employees. They company turn over rate is large.
An unscientific observation:
Since removing EVERY vestige of Symantec's Norton Anti Virus from EVERY machine using my home network - the instances of crashes, lock ups and the deadly blue screen of death have STOPPED.
Three years now - and trouble free.
Using ONLY the free McAfee AV provided by my cable ISP, Comcast, with routine sweeps by AdWare and Spybot.
Semper Fi
"I'm trusting this avast will not interrupt my small business"
I have been using Avast for about 3 years or more...Never had a moments problem.
I hope you were able to get rid of all the Norton garbage...Some say that you almost have to reformat to get it all off of the computer.
Thanks, I tried to download from their website. I couldn't finish due to my XP registration problems. Another Norton mess. Will probably have to uninstall XP and pray they will let me use my registration twice when I re-install. What a mess. Thanks for you help though. This all started Friday with Norton auto-updates. Argghh!!!
Hear, hear. Viruses tend to be both less troublesome, and easier to remove than Norton. And should you ever have a problem between Nortons A/V and Internet Security suite, break out your system discs, back up your data, and get started on a format and re-load. So many systems are sold with Norton pre-installed, that I've made a pretty good little side business out of removing it and various other pre-loaded crapware and re-loading machines to a raw Windows-only state, then letting the owners load all of their desired apps.
Trying to renew a Symantec subscription online is absolute hell.
Avast is not free. If you go to their "free" download page you will find that you have to give them your credit card number and sign up for either one, two or three years and are charged for that privilege.
I've been utilizing Avast for almost three years and have never had to provide them with a credit card number. Perhaps you were on the trial offer page.
Free version here http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
"Avast is not free."
I have never had to pay for the home version, and I get automatic updates almost every day.
They do have a pro version that they charge for.
"I think I'll give it a try since AVG will be charging for their software beginning next month."
No thet aren't. I just downloaded their new, free version.
The button for the free version is buried down in the product page however.
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5
Can someone else other than Symantec bashers comment on this thread? How does one find out if the "fix" for Norton Anti-virus has been installed? Can you tell from a log file?
ping
tag
First, all Symantec bashers were Symantec USERS first, and some of us, loyal ones for years. We are not doing it because we hate the product, we are doing it because the product hated us.
Can't you click on the Help/About and get the revision number? Then you can compare it to the current version listed on their site.
I have used Norton products on both Mac and PC for about 14 years, and never had a problem. I am amazed at the animus against Symantec.
Norton Internet Security:
1200 Registry Entries CAN'T be wrong! /sarc
AVG Free - SpyBot S&D TeaTimer.
So had I. I loved their firewall, for example.
But when it messes up, it does so catastrophically. As a security measure of preventing malware from disabling or uninstalling it, it embeds itself in some way related to the intrinsic machine ID. Should it ever corrupt, there is little chance of saving the system.
There is often mindless animosity in the Windows/Linux or Wintel/Mac threads, but in this case of the Symantec issue, the yelling is coming from betrayed and disillusioned customers who were once happy with the products. From my experience, I believe they kept on adding "features" that no one asked for, no one wanted, etc. just to justify more update sales and annual renewals.
At one time "Norton" was a good word. But when the Symantec Bomb finally goes off in someone's system, the mention of the word produces a Traumatic Stress reaction which lapses immediately into obscenities, and sometimes direct symbolic action, like me taking their CD's to the target range.
Wow, the ID embedding does sound like a recipe for trouble. I back up my PC every few days to a full 80-90 GB image, which I heartily recommend. That way, any problem short of hardware failure can be easily rectified.
I think that where things fail is the people buy these products for "Peace of Mind".
Now, all is safe and secure and serene, and then they lapse into a happy coma where "Nothing can go wrong", so they fail to do the things they were taught or used to do.(?)
Now, they are truly set up for disaster.
To give all the firewall/security manufacturers a little break in the diatribe, a lot of malware DOES intentionally try to disable or corrupt or defeat security programs. These may be the real cause of the failures in some cases. If a firewall program is crashed, and a dll is put away uncleared, then Bad Things start to happen. In a program as huge and complex as Symantec's Norton, it is an accident waiting to happen. I once saw a trojan/malware attack that brought my company down, and among the programs where disabling attempts were made was Zone Alarm and one of the MacAfee products.
We lost about $50,000 in downtime, and some CNC machines had titanium work in process when they went down. (Yes, I know, what idiot uses a networked Windows PC to run a $500,000 machine!?)
This was all because some idiot (PAST TENSE!) went to a porn site. A banner and popup flood followed, then the trojans all loaded and called other ones, etc...HUNDREDS of programs of malware.
New Norton/Symantec slogan: "The cure is worse than the disease."
Horrid bloatware that, along with its publisher, has gotten fat & lazy over the years. When FREE software runs rings around your expensive rubbish product it might be time to take stock of your situation.
Please post the memory that each Symantec/Norton product is eating up on your machines and we'll post a competing number.
Also, let's do a little performance benchmarking with and without Symantec/Norton. I hate to give the end of the movie away but I'm sure the non-Norton machines will do better.
No Kidding
I tested a Norton's anti-virus/PC health program several yrs. ago.
I tried to uninstall it and ran into all kinds of problems.
After searching the registry and other tricks I gave up and formatted the hard drive.
Never, ever again.
44MB of RAM for ccapp.exe.
What product(s) do as good a job for both virus and firewall, with a smaller footprint?
All the AVG-related services are using about 2MB on my machine. Agnitum Outpost Pro firewall is using about 10MB.
What is AVG?
AVG is a great antivirus program. They also recently took over EWIDO, which is one of my favorite anti-spyware and other stuff.
I have the paid versions of both, and worth it, too.
I also have the latest release of Prevx (the paid for version) and Spyware Sweeper (ditto).
Kerio Firewall.
And I run Ad-aware from time to time.
Each catches or works on things the others don't.
Wouldn't give Symantec a piece of my money for anything.
I use "Fix It Utilites". Never had a problem. They update the virus list every day. It fixes a lot of other problems on the computer as well. You can get it for about $30 just about anywhere. Great program!
Using Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS) 6.0.411 - Antivirus, Firewall and more. Using 7,804kb.
I also am a previous Symantec user with a bad experience.
What product(s) do as good a job for both virus and firewall, with a smaller footprint?
Wow. That is a major resource hog. A cursory check of my system processes reveals that both AVG and ZA Pro are using a combined total of 17 MB of RAM. This includes all firewall, email, and virus scanning. Ccapp appears to be the auto-protect and email scanner only as well. A Google of ccapp.exe revealed something that I would have a major problem with had I spent $40 for a years rental on Nortons crapware:
Note: ccapp.exe could also be a process belonging to an advertising program by Symantec Common Client CC App. This process monitors your browsing habits and distributes the data back to the author's servers for analysis. This also prompts advertising popups. This process is a security risk and should be removed from your system.
Thank you all for your advice and feedback.
I just took off Norton on an users computer. It had 71 processes running before, I got it down to 29 and running smoothly. Before, it was dirt slow, with 512 RAM. It seemed like it had 64 RAM....LOL Not anymore!!!!
Is this the virus that comes in an email marked "Invitation"?
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