Q&A: Symantec's CIO on piracy, new licensing portal
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While thousands of Veritas software users may be experiencing slow license renewals due to Symantec's new online licensing portal, the security software company's CIO said the wait is worth it compared with using pirated software.
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0. Introduction 1. SysAdmin of the Year Contest 2. Statistics  This SF.net update brought to you by HP --------------------------------------------------------- Open source and Linux from HP From eight consecutive years of Linux market leadership to countless community outreach programs, HP has proven solutions you can value, on a next generation, highly-efficient BladeSystem platform ideal for Linux, with the approach, experience, and customer commitment you can trust. http://www.linux.com/sponsor_solutions/hpos ---------------------------------------------------------  Hello, and welcome to this month's edition.  Last month, we announced the winners of the 2007 Community Choice Awards during our party at OSCON.  There were some surprises, lots of great winners, and a good time was certainly had by all.  For information about the winning projects, visit our Community Hub at http://sourceforge.net/community and click on the CCA logo.  The beta of our Marketplace continues to go well.  Our beta participants have been creating quality listings to provide our users with access to the experts they need...and, in the process, our design decisions are being validated one-by-one.  Keep a close watch on this new tool, it promises to be a hotspot of engineering activity for us over the next few months.  We will need some help, though!  We're looking for engineering talent to make all the complex things simple around here.  If you're in the bay area and want to join us, email jobs@corp.sourceforge.com  Thanks for reading!  The SourceForge.net Crew    SysAdmin of the Year Contest ----------------------------  Do have know a SysAdmin who goes beyond the call of duty? If so, nominate them as SysAdmin of the Year 2007.  They can win great prizes (Macbook Pro, iPhone, Splunk License), including the knowledge that you care.   The first 2500 SysAdmins nominated get a free t-shirt.  http://www.sysadminoftheyear.com    Statistics and Top Projects ---------------------------  Number of Projects: 155,959 Number of Registered Users: 1,662,751   Daily Stats for 20 August, 2007:  SF.net: 4,026,722 pages served Open Source Files downloaded in 24 hour period: 2,014,157  ---------------------------------------------------------  Top 25 Projects:   1. Azureus https://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus Azureus is a powerful, full-featured, cross-platform bittorrent client.  2. phpMyAdmin https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields.  3. Notepad++ https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus Notepad++ is a generic source code editor (it tries to be anyway) and Notepad replacement written in C++ with the win32 API. The aim of Notepad++ is to offer a slim and efficient binary with a totally customizable GUI.  4. OpenProj - Project Management https://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj OpenProj by Projity is a desktop replacement of Microsoft Project. OpenProj has equivalent functionality, a familiar user interface and even opens existing MSProject files. OpenProj is interoperable with Project, with a Gantt Chart and PERT chart etc.  5. ZK - Simply Ajax and Mobile https://sourceforge.net/projects/zk1 ZK is Ajax framework enriching Web apps with little programming. With event-driven and markup languages, development is as simple as programming desktops and authoring HTML/XUL pages. ZK supports scripting lang including Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy...  6. dimdim meeting server https://sourceforge.net/projects/dimdim Dimdim is an open source web meeting product with features like Application, Desktop and Presentation sharing with A/V streaming and chat. No attendee installation - all features are available through a web browser. Dimdim can be integrated with Moodle.  7. ADempiere Bazaar https://sourceforge.net/projects/adempiere Adempiere is an ERP Bazaar for Open Source Developers that contribute improvements of Compiere, CRM, Shopfloor, POS, Helpdesk, Financials Accounting, Supply Chain, Knowledge and Business apps in an open and unabated fashion. Focus is on the Community.  8. Zenoss Core - Enterprise IT Monitoring https://sourceforge.net/projects/zenoss Zenoss Core is an enterprise network and systems management application written in Python/Zope. Zenoss provides an integrated product for monitoring availability, performance, events and configuration across layers and across platforms.  9. Openbravo ERP https://sourceforge.net/projects/openbravo Web based ERP for SMEs, built on proven MVC & MDD framework that facilitate customization & maintenance of code. Already in production, it encompasses a broad range of functionalities such as finance, supply chain, project mgmt, manufacturing & much more  10. FreeCol https://sourceforge.net/projects/freecol FreeCol is an open version of Colonization. It is a Civilization-like game in which the player has to conquer the new world.  11. FileZilla https://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.  12. WebCalendar https://sourceforge.net/projects/webcalendar WebCalendar is a PHP application used to maintain a calendar for a single user or an intranet group of users. It can also be configured as an event calendar.  13. PhpGedView https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpgedview PhpGedView parses GEDCOM 5.5 genealogy files and displays them on the internet in formats and charts that you are familiar with.It also allows relatives to edit their genealogy online and collaborate together on their research.  14. MediaInfo https://sourceforge.net/projects/mediainfo Get technical information and tags of a lot of multimedia files. Supported formats : - Video : AVI/OGM/MKV/MPG/VOB/MP4/3GP/... - Audio : MP3/OGG/MKA/MP4/AAC/...  15. 7-Zip https://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip 7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format.  16. KeePass Password Safe https://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass KeePass Password Safe is a free, open source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager for Windows. You can store your passwords in a highly-encrypted database, which is locked with one master password or key file.  17. MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw MinGW: A native Win32 port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), with freely distributable import libraries and header files for building native Windows applications; includes extensions to the MSVC runtime to support C99 functionality.  18. XOOPS Dynamic Web CMS https://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops XOOPS is a dynamic web content management system written in PHP for the MySQL database. Its object orientation makes it an ideal tool for developing small or large community websites, intra company and corporate portals, weblogs and much more.  19. FreeMind https://sourceforge.net/projects/freemind A mind mapper, and at the same time an easy-to-operate hierarchical editor with strong emphasis on folding. These two are not really two different things, just two different descriptions of a single application. Often used for knowledge and content mgmt.  20. Arianne RPG https://sourceforge.net/projects/arianne Arianne is a multiplayer online engine to develop turn based and real time games providing a simple way of creating the game server rules and clients like Stendhal. Marauroa, our server, uses Java and MySQL for hosting hundreds of players on a solo host.  21. OrangeHRM - Human Resource Management https://sourceforge.net/projects/orangehrm OrangeHRM developed by OrangeHRM Inc is an Open Source HR Information Systems(HRIS) that assists you in managing company's human resources. Through scalable modular architecture it covers main areas of Personnel Management/HRM such as PIM, ESS & Leave.  22. Gallery https://sourceforge.net/projects/gallery A slick, intuitive web based photo gallery. Gallery is easy to install, configure and use. Gallery photo management includes automatic thumbnails, resizing, rotation, and more. Authenticated users and privileged albums make this great for communities.  23. Pidgin https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin Pidgin is a GTK+ instant messaging application for Windows and Unix. It supports AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE and more. See http://pidgin.im/about.php for more information.  24. XBMC (Xbox Media Center) https://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc XBMC (Xbox Media Center) is a free multimedia player jukebox for Microsoft Xbox game console, it is capable of playing back almost all known video, audio and picture formats from the Xbox harddrive, DVD-ROM drive, a local-network, and even the internet.  25. JasperReports - Java Reporting https://sourceforge.net/projects/jasperreports JasperReports, the market leading open source business intelligence and reporting engine. This project is being moved to http://www.jasperforge.org/. This project is the home for all things Jasper, Reports, Analysis, Server, and Intelligence.
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SEPTEMBER 13, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Symantec Corp. is fishing for dollars with a new service designed to help companies combat the ongoing epidemic of online identity theft, or &quot;phishing,&quot; scams.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec Corp. has filed suit against an alleged software piracy ring, that has been in operation in North America since late 2003, the software vendor claims. The lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeks more than US$15 million in damages from a network of U.S. and Canadian businesses that are alleged to have sold counterfeit versions of Symantec's products, including Norton AntiVirus, pcAnywhere and Veritas Backup Exec. These companies and their affiliates run a global counterfeit organization that focuses on the U.S. and Canada, Symantec said. The businesses, which operated under eight different names, including Sili Inc., Advanced Sales Productivity Solutions Inc. and GT Micro, used spam and online advertising to offer Symantec's software at cut-rate prices, said Cris Paden, a Symantec spokesman. Customers who paid for the software would then be sent disks with Symantec's logo, wrapped in plain white sleeves. The disks, which came without documentation, would not install or work properly and could also include malicious software that would then be used to steal sensitive information from the purchaser's computer, Paden said. Symantec began investigating the matter in early 2004, when it started receiving complaints from customers who had bought the bad software, Paden added. "The people who bought these disks thinking they were from Symantec would come to our customer service," he said. One of the Sili Web sites named in Symantec's complaint, Sle-business.com, http://www.sle-business.com/Product%20List.htm Norton AntiVirus 2006. That product typically sells for about $20. Sle-business.com's Web site also offers software from McAfee Inc., Intuit Inc., Corel Corp. and Webroot Software Inc., among others. Sili representatives could not be reached immediately for comment. Symantec has worked with police to seize more than 100,000 copies of counterfeit disks, but Paden did not know if criminal charges would be forthcoming in the case. "We are working with law enforcement," he said. "I can't tell you who because if I did that would tip our hands to the extent of our investigation." Like many other vendors, Symantec has become more aggressive in its fight against unauthorized copying. In 2002, Symantec was losing about $500 million per year to software piracy, but it has now reduced those losses to less than $50 million per year, he said. Customers who are worried that they may be buying phony software online should make sure they are actually giving their credit-card information over a secure Web site, Paden said. That means that when they are asked to enter a credit-card number, the Web address should begin with https://, and there should be a locked padlock displayed near the address to indicate that the browser is visiting a secure site. "That's the smoking gun as to whether you're dealing with a legitimate outfit or not," Paden said. "99 percent of the time these guys don't use this."ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Security specialist Symantec has admitted to a number of vulnerabilities in its firewall and gateway products. The weaknesses make them liable to denial of service attacks and other compromises.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec researchers are working on a pair of projects to give Norton users a better idea of whether the Web sites they visit or the files they download are trustworthy. "We're actually looking into reputation-based security systems, both for Web sites and for files," said Stephen Trilling, vice president of Symantec Research Labs. The projects have been quietly under development since the latter part of last year, he said. Although the area of reputation-based security is relatively new, there are already a number of companies that use the technology because it is considered a promising technique for thwarting previously unknown threats. McAfee's SiteAdvisor, for example, scours the Web and runs tests on Web sites to see if they do thingsÂ such asÂ serve up malicious code or spam visitors. And GoogleÂ recently opened up access to its blacklist of malicious Web sites, which the search giant generates by searching the Internet in a similar fashion. Though Trilling declined to talk about specifics, he said that Symantec has some new ideas on how to better warn users of suspicious Web pages. "We certainly are looking initially at protecting people from malicious threats," he said. "That's our primary goal." The file-based evaluations could be derived from data generated by Symantec users, he said. "The challenge here is you can't simply ask people what was their experience with this file," he said. "You need some sort of automated way to derive reputation information from people's patterns of downloading." Symantec Labs has created another Web security technology, called Canary, that blocks sites from downloading malicious code. Canary is expected to ship with Norton's next refresh of its client security products, due later this year, but it is separate from the Web- and file-rating systems, Trilling said. "Canary is not based on leveraging any desktop-voting or reputation-based system at all," he said. No decision has yet been made on whether to move the reputation-based projects into Symantec's products, but the Web reputation systems is further along in development, Trilling said. Symantec's estimated 50 million anti-virus software users give it an advantage when it comes to generating reliable reputation data, said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist with Cloudmark, which sells a reputation-based e-mail filtering system. "The challenge for Symantec is going to be absorbing all the various inputs and issuing a response in a timely fashion."
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The company's antipiracy software adds a "yellow state" for times when it just can't tell if software is genuine.Image: A 'maybe pirate'
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THE DEAL: Symantec Corp., best known for its Norton-branded software that fights computer viruses, is heading in a new direction with a $13.5 billion acquisition of data storage and backup specialist Veritas Software Corp.
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Anti-virus protection is so last century Symantec's integration with Veritas in the UK has run into computer problems, leaving many Symantec customers unable to renew their corporate anti-virus licenses and large numbers of computers unprotected.â¦
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TechWeb - Symantec announced it is working on a Web-based console for IT administrators to manage Norton AntiVirus for the Macintosh clients -- the software is expected in two months.
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When solution providers look back on Symantec&#39;s acquisition of Veritas Software, they will likely remember it as the moment security and storage officially became joined at the hip.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec Corp. plans to integrate two of its compliance assessment products to make it easier for IT administrators to manage the software, a company executive said Thursday. Engineers at the company are working on integrating Symantec's Enterprise Security Manager and Control Compliance Suite, said Tom Kendra, president of Symantec's Security and Data Management group, speaking on a webcast of the company's annual financial analyst conference Thursday. The project, code-named "Nextgen," is expected to ship in 2008, or possibly even as soon as the end of the year, Kendra said. Symantec did not disclose many other details about Nextgen. "The real key with Nextgen is it will be combining agent and agentless technologies," according to a company spokesman. These compliance products are used to identify systems on the network that are misconfigured or that do not have the latest security patches. Control Compliance Suite can perform scans of the network without requiring the installation of "agent" software on the devices being scanned.
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During a weeklong period in mid-November, security experts with Symantec observed roughly 65,000 new applications being downloaded onto the computers of customers participating in a new research project -- based on their analysis of the software, as many as 60 percent of the programs were malicious.The involved timeframe represented a relative high point for the percentage of unknown applications being downloaded by Symantec's project participants, and the basis for the company's assessment of the programs as malicious was predicated largely on the programs' use of obfuscated naming conventions.However, the numbers point to a disturbing trend that the researchers say may force the security company to change its fundamental approach for warding off threats -- that being that the number of malicious applications coming to life on the Web appears to be outpacing the volume of legitimate programs.With malware authors using fuzzing tools to find holes in popular applications such as Web browsers, and testing their work against commercial anti-virus (AV) products to ensure that the attacks evade detection by the tools, leading researchers at Symantec admit that defending against threats using traditional methods has become something of a losing battle."The reality is that most new malware is going undetected by commercial security products, and not just Symantec's, but we have to recognize that like all other AV products we are probably missing a sizeable amount of this malware," said Carey Nachenberg, a member of the company's Security Response team who also wears the title of Symantec Fellow."Eventually we write [virus] signatures and get those out to customers, but it appears that a sizeable proportion of this malware never gets detected," he said. "Instead of distributing one copy of each malware program to thousands of people, they're producing a copy for as few as two or three people and then re-writing it; so, if we get one version we can remove it from a few computers, but not all the variants. The problem with this is that there is the potential over time for almost everyone to have some form of infestation, maybe in only a few years time."The trend toward malware authors using small runs of attacks to evade detection and hook as many victims as possible, known as server-side polymorphism, is forcing Symantec to reassess how it goes about protecting its users.Since it can't hope to keep up with every flavor of threat that is being created, traditional countermeasures such as the use of malware signatures or behavioral heuristics will need to be augmented with new tactics, Nachenberg said.One such alternative is the use of the same distributed data collection capabilities that Symantec is using to track the proliferation of malware. By creating a system of file and Web site reputation by studying applications usage patterns among its customers, the researcher said, Symantec hopes to use a community approach to help people determine which programs they decide to use, or avoid.Much as many people turn to the reviews section on Amazon.com or the buyer feedback system on eBay to get a real-world take on products before they decide to buy, Nachenberg contends that by watching how people are using various applications the security vendor can use a process of elimination for weeding out malware from legitimate software.If only a few people among the millions of Symantec customers who could contribute usage data to such a program were utilizing some application in question, it would be prudent to recommend that people avoid the program until its nature has been better determined, he said.Using opt-out tools that provide anonymous feedback on applications that were built into Symantec's existing Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security 2008 products, the company is already gathering the type of data necessary to create such a system of recommendation."Right now this is just a long-term research project, but we hope that as we get more users involved in the system, we can truly get a better idea of what is on people's computers so that we can identify malicious software based on the demographics of who is using it, versus what it does," Nachenberg said. "We're hoping to get more clarity through the large base of users we have; by collecting this data we should be able to get the most comprehensive view of the usage patterns to derive reputation information for everything they use."Faced with questions over potential privacy issues driven by Symantec's ability to watch just who is using what applications and how, the researcher reiterated that users must be made aware of the data collection, allowed to opt-out, and guaranteed that all the information aggregation is done in an anonymous fashion.By offering users the ability to decide whether or not to use an application based on demographics, versus simply blocking programs based on its own observations, the company will also give people more freedom to determine what tools they feel are appropriate to use, he said."If we know that only five people are using a program, given the tens of millions of users we ultimately hope to have in the system, we can be totally objective and recommend that people wait until it is scrutinized further before using it," the researcher said. "We will need to have some manual process for white-listing programs as well, but we think that using this approach we can deliver a reasonable amount of quality with a low false positive rate."If the volume of new malware strains arriving on the Web continues to outpace the proliferation of legitimate programs, Nachenberg said that AV vendors including Symantec may need to move to a white-listing approach in general, and focus more attention on identifying good applications instead of trying to chase down all the bad."If there is less software to analyze that is good, it makes more sense to spend our time scanning for good programs and simply telling our users to avoid everything else," he said. "We're considering models where we can produce the world's largest up-to-date white list of software, but it's not something we can put together in a year; maybe in two-to-three years time."
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Blog: Symantec technology creates new protection for Internet Explorer users.
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(Source: Symantec) Learn more about the NEW Symantec Endpoint Protection solution. Mike Monzon will take you on a comprehensive tour of the latest endpoint security products from Symantec. IT professionals with network security expertise will gain an in-depth understanding of how these exciting new products from Symantec will help secure the endpoints on their network and ensure compliance with security policies.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec Corp. Wednesday released a beta of its new enterprise security product, formerly code-named Hamlet, that melds technology from several of the company's acquisitions over the last few years. The product, Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0, replaces the previous enterprise version, Symantec AntiVirus. It's a public beta, and the final version will be released around September. Symantec has decided not to charge more for the new product. "We believe the level of protection you should get for your money should be higher," said Mathew Lodge, director of product marketing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The EndPoint Protection suite is the culmination of a Symantec buying spree that included acquisitions of Sygate, Whole Security and Veritas. "We've spent a lot of money buying other companies," Lodge said. "We've integrated that technology into the new release." Endpoint Protection includes technology that looks at how applications behave, a way to detect if a program is doing something suspicious. For example, some malicious software programs try to download other programs from the Internet, which often is a bad sign. The suite includes other security features such as antivirus and antispyware capabilities, a firewall and host and network-based intrusion prevention technology. Another new feature is application control, which allows administrators to control what programs users can run on their machines. Also new is Symantec Network Access Control 11.0, an optional module that can be incorporated into Endpoint Protection. The feature determines whether or not to allow a mobile device to connect to the network depending on if it is a security risk, such as if the device doesnât have up-to-date patches. The module accommodates both Cisco's and Microsoft's protocols for network access control, Lodge said. It can also simply authenticate and check devices when they connect to a network and make a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) request, Lodge said. Symantec also announced a new program called Storage United, which is designed to help companies better organize their data storage even if they are using different OSes and storage hardware platforms. The program revolves around three themes: next-generation data protection, storage management and information management, said Kevin Bailey, senior product marketing manager. Prominent in the strategy will be use of NetBackup, a storage platform that came from Symantec's acquisition of Veritas, Bailey said. REFERENCES: Symantec slips, but closes in on AV product delivery, May 2, 2007Symantec mobile security client delayed, May 30, 2007
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The User Account Control built into Windows Vista is supposed to help make the new operating system safer. But it can be spoofed, undermining the very mission for which it was created, according to Symantec.