Symantec may compensate Chinese users hit by buggy update
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Symantec Corp. is leaving open the possibility that it may compensate Chinese computer users whose systems were crippled by a flawed antivirus update last week.
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Symantec has revoked its decision to blacklist a program that allows Web surfers in China to browse government-blocked Web sites. The move follows reports that the firm labelled the Freegate program, which
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Rolling update method deprives Java users of needed  patches, security vendor says.
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'Lacks seriousness and sincerity' We were skeptical on Monday when Symantec said it would atone for a bug that crippled the PCs of tens of thousands Chinese users by giving them free software. "Cockroach in your salad, sir? Have some free salad," was how we put it.â¦
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Even users of a new version complain of hours-long outages, feature malfunctions and data loss.
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The virus, dubbed W64.Shruggle by Symantec, seems mainly to be an experiment to test the concept of a 64-bit infecter and is not actively spread, said Alfred Huger, senior director of security at Symantec.
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Chinese users whose PCs were crippled by a faulty virus update are suing Symantec for damages.
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Symantec has released a patch for its Veritas NetBackup software, saying it had discovered a buffer overflow vulnerability in the application. The flaw exists in the web programming language PHP used within NetBackup.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec declared itsÂ compensation offerÂ for Chinese users who saw their computers damaged by a bad software update a success Sunday, but declined to say how many users had accepted the deal. Symantec ran into trouble May 18, when the company issued a faulty software update for its Norton antivirus software that wrongly identified two system files in the Simplified Chinese edition of Windows XP as malware, and quarantined them. That blunder rendered an estimated 50,000 Chinese PCs unusable, Symantec said. The incident also provoked an angry outcry from Chinese users, who demanded compensation for the damage wrought on their systems by Symantec. At least two users filed lawsuits against Symantec over damage done to their PCs by the company. Five weeks after the bad update was released, Symantec offered free software to those Chinese users who were affected. The company offered Chinese consumers a 12-month Norton license extension and a copy of Norton Save & Restore 2.0. Corporate customers were offered Symantec Ghost Solution Suite licenses, depending on the number of PCs affected. Symantec did not extend Norton licenses for corporate customers affected by the bad update. The compensation offer, which was valid for two and a half weeks starting from June 27, ended Sunday night. However, the Web site created for users to apply for compensation remained up at the time of writing, on Monday morning. In an e-mail statement sent Sunday, Symantec declared the offer a success, saying the gesture had been "well received." But the company did not offer any information to back up that claim. Symantec's offer was widely criticizedÂ in the Chinese press when it was first announced. "Symantec's response to its Chinese consumers lacks seriousness and sincerity," Alamus, the deputy director of the China Electronic Commerce Association's committee on legal and policy issues, said at that time in a report by China Central Television (CCTV), the country's national TV broadcaster. While Symantec's compensation offer officially ended Sunday, the company is keeping the door open for users who missed the July 15 deadline. "After this date anyone who missed the registration date should contact Symantec Customer Support or email symantec.authorised.support.cn@clts.com and we will give consideration to extending the date for that individual customer," the company said. Â
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The latest bug is the fifth systems-related problem so far this year.
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Symantec unveiled a new version of its NetBackup software that adds management and administration features that appear to fix problems that caused past users to dump the product.
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Users urged to upgrade RealPlayer and Helix Player to repair critical security flaw.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec's attempt to make amends with Chinese users who saw theirÂ computers crippled by its antivirus softwareÂ is off to a rocky start, with critics saying the company'sÂ compensation offerÂ isn't good enough. "Symantec's response to its Chinese consumers lacks seriousness and sincerity," said Alamus, the deputy director of the China Electronic Commerce Association's committee on legal and policy issues, speaking in a news report on CCTV 9, the international channel of state broadcaster China Central Television. Alamus uses a single name. The company also came under criticism in a separate report carried by CCTV's dedicated news channel on Monday. "We think this kind of compensation, of course, is better than nothing. But it's not a comprehensive and complete compensation offer," Lu Benfu, director of the Chinese Academy of Science's Internet Development Research Center, said in that report. The problems caused by Symantec's update and its compensation offer have also generated heavy coverage online. Sina.com, one of China's most popular news sites, has set up a dedicated page, complete with links to news reports, blog postings, discussion threads, and user polls. Symantec's problems began May 18 when it issued a faulty Norton antivirus update for the Simplified Chinese version of Windows XP. The update mistook two system files for malware and quarantined them, crippling thousands of PCs. Symantec estimated that 50,000 PCs were affected, while Chinese press reports put the figure higher. The incident provoked an outcry among Chinese users, with many demanding compensation for lost data and the cost of restoring their systems. At least two lawsuits have been filed against Symantec over the incident. At first the company issued a formal apology and a fix for the problem, but offered no compensation. As calls for compensation persisted, the company said details of a compensation offer were under consideration. On Monday, five weeks after the faulty update was released, Symantec announced that affected users will be eligible to receive free software. Symantec is offering affected Chinese consumers a one-year extension to their license for its Norton antivirus software and a copy of Norton Save & Restore 2.0. Corporate customers are being offered Symantec Ghost Solution Suite licenses, depending on the number of PCs affected. The company is not offering to extend antivirus licenses for corporate customers affected by the faulty update. This deal, which Symantec described as a "goodwill offer" rather than compensation, will be offered to users for a brief window of time, from June 27 to July 15. That choice of wording may ultimately come back to haunt the company. "It's obvious that Symantec is trying to avoid mentioning compensation. They are watching the reaction from users," Alamus told CCTV. "They are attempting to get away from their responsibility." Chinese consumers have become increasingly vocal in recent years, often taking complaints about products and services online with postings on Internet bulletin boards and blogs. The commentators often have an impact offline, as well. "They are the experts that you go to when you want to select antivirus software, for example, so their influence certainly extends offline," said Sam Flemming, the CEO and founder of CIC, a firm that tracks Chinese bulletin boards and blogs for multinational companies. The complaints rarely spill over into mainstream news coverage, such as CCTV news broadcasts. But when they do, foreign companies make easier targets than Chinese companies, for several reasons. Foreign companies generally lack the political backing and connections to shield them from criticism, and they are vulnerable to nationalist sentiments that can inflame consumer attitudes towards them. "Foreign companies who run into these problems will get hit harder than Chinese companies," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Web site that tracks China's media. Â
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When Steve Sinchak's new Intel network card became "really slow" after upgrading his Windows Vista PC with a pre-release version of Service Pack 1, he tried uninstalling its software driver and replacing it with a new one.But to his dismay, the Chicago-area technology author and blogger found himself "stuck in a loop" during the InstallShield-managed process -- unable to replace his sluggish older driver with a new, peppier one."It's messed up to the point where I may have to use brute force to uninstall the driver, or wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista completely," he said.Sinchak's is an example, admittedly an extreme one, of the driver problems that forced Microsoft to take the unusual step of holding SP1's availability to users until March even while announcing its release to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday.Not even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been testing Vista SP1, nor the many Windows developers accustomed to being able to download software on Microsoft's MSDN or TechNet Web sites immediately after RTM, will be able to get SP1 for another 6-8 weeks.And if you are one of the unlucky Vista users using a driver known to break and need reinstallation after the upgrade to SP1, Windows Update will quarantine you from getting SP1 until the driver is fixed."We want all of our customers to have the same good experience," said Microsoft senior product manager, David Zipkin, in an interview Monday. "That's why we're erring on the side of caution."Cancel or allow or shut up already?Service Pack 1 remains the milestone by which many companies and consumers judge when a Microsoft product is truly bug-free and mature enough to deploy. Any delay in SP1 could have an adverse effect on Vista uptake, which has been generally strong -- more than 100 million copies shipped -- despite a lukewarm market response.Zipkin points out that most drivers, once re-installed after the SP1 upgrade, should work properly.That was the experience of several Computerworld readers.Zipkin blames hardware vendors for failing to strictly follow Redmond's instructions on how drivers should be installed."The issue is that the drivers were not written per the spec we have on MSDN to ensure successful updates," he said, a spec that "has been around since the XP days."Zipkin declined to elaborate or comment on Sinchak's case. And neither Intel nor Macrovision, maker of the InstallShield software, immediately responded to requests for comment.But some experts think that the problem must be related to under-the-hood changes in Vista SP1, especially those concerning security and user privileges, which can directly affect how applications and drivers are installed."Microsoft looks like they are monkeying around with a lot of lower-level stuff," said Paul Morris, a project manager at QualityLogic, a Moorpark, Calif. software and driver testing firm. "In my mind, you've got to treat SP1 as an entirely new OS."Vista's overhauled security model had two major changes. First, local users who were formerly granted administrator access by default are granted standard access in Vista. Second, a new feature called User Account Control, or UAC, prompts users to verify whenever a new application or driver is about to be installed.Both moves help to prevent viruses and malware from taking hold. But UAC has been criticized by some users for its overzealousness, though UAC pop-ups decrease dramatically after the first month, according to Redmond.Moreover, moving users to standard rather than administrator accounts wreaked havoc on many applications and drivers that depended on full administrator access to install or run properly.If SP1 makes even small changes to Vista's security model, that could cause drivers to break again, according to Ian Lao, an analyst at In-Stat. Why? For one, most vendors took the easier, less rigorous option of patching and modifying their drivers to make them Vista compatible, rather than "rewriting them from the ground-up," said Lao. That makes them more fragile.Moreover, many drivers, unlike applications, can't be completely shut down during an installation process. The upgraded software -- in this case Vista -- may not be able to properly update the drivers, he said. Thus, permissions may be lost during the SP1 upgrade, or resources moved to different locations.Of drivers and ass-kickingsDrivers were a major bane to Vista in its early months last year.Despite Microsoft's claim that more than 1.6 million peripherals worked with Vista at its launch, there were numerous complaints from early adopters, gamers and other power users about non-working devices."It definitely wasn't just a vocal minority that had a problem with drivers at Vista's launch," said Robert McLaws, a blogger who also tested SP1 but didn't face any driver issues.Indeed, driver issues had been on the wane. At its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference last May, Microsoft said that 1.9 million devices supported Vista.Microsoft has not updated that number since then. But it says that over 78,000 hardware products are now supported by Windows Update, up from 34,000 at launch.And 17,000 peripherals and devices (see list, IE 6+ required) have passed one of Microsoft's two rigorous certification programs: Certified for Windows Vista, which requires successful testing by a third party such as QualityLogic, and the more self-reported Works with Windows Vista program, which is more reliant on self-reporting."A lot of OEMs did not take the Vista launch seriously," McLaws said. "So Microsoft took their problem reports to vendors and kicked some ass."In a PowerPoint presentation distributed to media last month, Microsoft was confident enough to state "Many device and software problems behind us: Nearly all Windows Vista PCs have drivers for every single device installed, available on WU [Windows Update] or from vendor websites."But Microsoft may have relaxed too soon. Morris says none of vendors that came to QualityLogic for certification of their Vista drivers have returned seeking the same service for SP1."They may be hammering on them tooth and nail internally, but they're not asking us to touch it," he said.The result? Monday's delay.Gregg Keizer contributed to this story.
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Symantec&#39;s Security Response has issued a warning about three new &quot;serious&quot; vulnerabilities discovered in the Windows operating system.
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But remains functional, company says Symantec is working on a patch a bug that generates errors in corporate security protection updates. Workarounds enabling virus signature definition updates to Symantec Endpoint Protection are available, but a more comprehensive fix is still in testing.â¦
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Software giant says users are responsible for the modifications that generated claims of unauthorized patch installs.