Symantec releases online cybersecurity quiz
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It's an odd bid to get some attention by one of the leaders in computer security, because it poses interesting questions but doesn't vary at all if you play multiple times.
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The purpose of this article is to analyze a public exploit in a lab environment, see the alerts generated by an intrusion detection system, and then do some packet analysis of the malicious binary in order to better understand it.
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Security-minded users can find out faster if their applications need to be patched with a free tool.
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Antivirus firm Symantec is facing a denial-of-service attack on its Web site from the latest version of the MyDoom worm. Authors of MyDoom.
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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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Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) has launched a new strategy for enterprise I.T. security that is designed to help businesses manage and protect the massive amounts of digital information on their networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Symantec's new identity protection software, Norton Confidential,Â is set to ship on Monday. The product is designed to make Web surfing more secure by thwarting phishing and pharming attacks and disabling "crimeware or malicious applications that are designed to steal your confidential information," said Bill Rosenkrantz, director of product management with Symantec. Norton Confidential will warn users when they are visiting suspected phishing sites and will verify that legitimate Web sites are trustworthy by displaying a "Trust Mark" icon on the browser's toolbar. It also detects keystroke loggers and prevents password information from being sent to unauthorized Web sites. The product will be of particular interest to people who have already been the targets of identity theft, said Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis with the NPD Group Inc. "If an identity thief captures their personal information while they're shopping online or enters their PC because they don't have a firewall, this limits that type of abuse," he said. "What it doesn't protect the customer from is the bank or the university whose server gets compromised." A subset of the Norton Confidential product has been shipping in Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2007 product, and it will be also be built into the upcoming Norton 360 security suite. Norton Confidential has a list price of $49.99 for a one-year subscription, but it can be purchased from Symantec's Web site for $34.99 per year. A shrink-wrapped version of the product will ship in November.
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Symantec's primary strategy in the enterprise may currently revolve around the notion of IT risk management, but the company's latest research finds that efforts to refine corporate process unrelated to security technology have become just as popular with customers moving to limit their exposure.According to Symantec's annual survey of 405 businesses, the notion that technologies used to improve IT security serve as the most vital element of corporate risk management currently ranks below other priorities among customers. Respondents to the study rated IT availability management and work on specific regulatory compliance projects as comparable, and in some cases more important, to their ongoing risk mitigation efforts.In addition, fewer businesses are utilizing a strategy that approaches IT risk as a standalone skill set or initiative, according to the Symantec report.One year ago, customers participating in the study indicated that the adoption of security technologies represented the central tenet of their risk management plans. In the 2008 report, 78 percent replied that availability maintenance concerns are now as vital to their exposure mitigation efforts as the installation of security tools.Some 70 percent of respondents replied that security projects are still a critical part of their approach. However, 53 percent of the IT-related incidents experienced by surveyed companies were tied to other issues besides problems with systems defense."IT risk doesn't necessarily equate to security risk. That's a big shift and the key takeaway is that organizations are getting more mature around the portfolio of risks they have to manage," said Samir Kapuria, managing director of Advisory Services at Symantec. "In the past, people looked at one area as discreet, but now they're addressing the four pillars of compliance, security, risk, and performance availability as part of a balanced strategy."Increasing interdependence on IT systems shared between business partners has elevated availability and performance concerns above security issues -- and businesses are more worried about causing a bottleneck in their global supply chain then they are looking to thwart attacks, the expert contends."IT systems availability can have a downstream impact which has had this downward effect," Kapuria said.Spending on compliance-oriented projects also stands as a major piece of most companies' plans, with 68 percent of those people responding stating that their employers rate those efforts as crucial to their risk management strategies.Respondents indicated that high-level risk management projects have become less central to their IT planning, with companies favoring targeted initiatives that address individual problems or regulations.In terms of the participants' expectations to avoid and prevent IT breakdowns, 69 percent said they believe they will encounter at least one minor incident per month, with 63 percent predicting a major IT failure at least once a year.Some 26 percent indicated they expect a failed regulatory compliance incident at least once annually, and 25 percent said that they will experience a data loss event every 12 months."This speaks volumes to the confidence that people have about their overall IT risk posture," said Kapuria. "Part of the problem is that people only do assessments on a bi-annual basis, or they might inventory their assets sporadically; that gap is what often leads to exposure in availability, security, compliance, or performance." All the individual projects involved need to be managed on an ongoing basis, he said.However, the process remains a moving target. Increased adoption of mobile devices and other distributed enterprise trends continue to boost data and compliance risks, while business practices -- including fast-paced mergers and acquisitions -- introduce greater complexity, Kapuria said.More than technological efforts, the Symantec report contends that companies may see faster returns in improving their risk status through greater investment in employee risk education and training.Only 43 percent of respondents rated their training and awareness programs as more than 75 percent effective, showing that companies are well aware of their current shortcomings, Kapuria said. The report shows a decrease of over 50 percent in companies' confidence about their training programs, compared to the year ago survey."The area where most people need to focus on is classifying their data, what it's used for, and what its sensitivity may be," said Kapuria. "Rather than just throwing technology at their problems, companies need to assess, and then apply the appropriate availability, security, and compliance requirements."
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More info and a new kit for building and customizing Trojan malware is on sale online.
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In early December, InfoWorld Senior Writer Matt Hines had the opportunity to sit down with John Thompson, chief executive of Symantec, and David DeWalt, chief executive of McAfee, to interview the leaders about the strategic direction of their companies and where they see different aspects of the IT security market heading in 2008 and beyond.Each of the individual interviews took their own course, but an intentional effort was made on the part of the reporter to ask the two executives about many of the same issues.What follows are a sampling of the respective CEO's comments on issues related to the rise of data protection, consolidation in the security market, and competitive issues between the two industry leaders and their many rivals.Matt Hines, InfoWorld: Over the last year in particular we've seen a relative sea change on the security market as customers have shifted their focus toward data protection, versus more traditional methods of defending endpoints and network assets.How has this forced a strategic change in direction for your companies -- in particular as smaller vendors in sectors including DLP (data leakage prevention) make claims that they are better suited to deal with this shift? John Thompson, Symantec: The reality is that we have had great insight about what information was flowing around in an organization for years. The fact that we were doing virus protection was interesting, but what was more interesting was depth and breadth of intelligence network around the world, which has been telling us about where viruses and worms are coming from, what hacker attacks are occurring, where spam is originating from, and what keywords people are using to bypass filters.There's a great deal of insight that's associated with that intelligence network that Symantec has that should make this shift toward information-based security easier for us than any smaller company that doesn't have that breadth.Furthermore, customers that have the expectation that we and others who have been trusted providers for them will evolve as their needs evolve. Certainly, that's been the case in the more traditional security technologies. If [you] look at what AV (anti-virus) technology does today versus what it did five years ago, it is light years different.We should use the metaphor of the evolution of the past to apply to the problems of the future, and we've certainly evolved our business over the last ten years to be very different in terms of its focus and our ability to solve problems for customers that ten years ago probably didn't exist.David DeWalt, McAfee: Actually, see it as a huge advantage to being a big company. Managing data and data security is a pretty strategic thing for corporations, when I think about who they would trust as an advisor in these situations. Either a startup who may be dedicated to only [DLP], or someone with a thousand people in support, you get a level of service related to companies like Symantec and McAfee that isn't there with the others -- we're already running in most large corporations on the endpoint.Adding another endpoint agent from a small company versus going with McAfee isn't as attractive to these customers. We offer cost optimization, centralized management, and other benefits that you can't get from smaller companies.The reality in the security world today is that we are seeing more cost-optimization requirements. So, how do you look at a company like us that has AV, anti-spyware, HIPS (host intrusion protection), and NAC (network access control), and how will you add DLP and encryption as an agent, versus adding someone else's products?? We look to acquire the best of breed to do that -- to make sure that we have the best technology to fit into our suite -- and offer centralized management with single agent control to every desktop.That's the big company game we play, and you have to recognize that turning the ship isn't necessarily about building a technology from scratch. Data security meeting endpoint security, meeting perimeter security is an important component of why people would trust a larger vendor.InfoWorld: DLP is obviously an area where both companies have made significant investments over the last year, with Symantec's acquisition of Vontu, and McAfee's acquisitions of Onigma and Safeboot. Could you describe your strategies around DLP and why it has become such an important element of data security?Thompson: The first thing we have to ask ourselves is if this is a problem that customers would like for us to help them solve; if so, is there a technology already in place in the market that has already garnered the hearts and minds of its users? Clearly, that was the case for Vontu, who was unquestionably the market leading solution for DLP.Our view is, if this a problem that customers would look to Symantec to help them solve, why not see if we can acquire the best technology to be able to do that?The question of DLP as a standalone platform or as a feature will be answered in how customers want to solve the problem. If customers are willing to dedicate resources to the problem as an isolated area of activity, that probably functions as a standalone product.However, if they view that solving that problem is a part of another business process, then it would behoove us to make that feature part of a broader suite.DLP over time might become part of a broader digital rights management strategy for an organization. Now, that's a big theme that goes well beyond what Vontu does today, but if you believe that the currency of business today is as much about information as it is about cash, having a clear understanding of where digital content is and who has rights and privileges to use it is a very important topic for a lot of companies today.DeWalt: McAfee and Symantec have clearly addressed DLP in very different ways.We see DLP having two important problem-solving areas: intellectual property protection, and the management and monitoring of information loss via endpoints.We believe that most DLP events occur through insiders, through endpoint devices. Not people e-mailing out the source code, but copying it onto a USB drive and walking out with it. Is it more practical to e-mail the source code over the network or copy it to 60GB drive in a matter of second?If you look at where the problem is, you'll see the protection of intellectual property is the most important issue, and that secondly, it's about compliance data privacy reporting components.With Safeboot, encryption is already proven as a strong approach for data privacy and breach management, and it is best served when the customer can prove no loss of data when the lose a mobile device, that they have no need to report that incident.If you can address those two problems, you can address the bulk of the issues on the marketplace. It will be up to customers to determine which approach they think is better: a network-oriented appliance tool, as with Vontu, or protection at the endpoint, which is where we have invested.What we have compared to Vontu is apples to hubcaps, literally entirely different technologies. Vontu is primarily a network gateway appliance that is matching rules. There's no host to classify content, but primarily an appliance to look and monitor for data loss.That's a totally different thing than Safeboot, which is whole disk encryption for mobile devices. Symantec has no encryption technology in its entire portfolio, so the technologies are not even in the same hemisphere. Symantec bet that monitoring network traffic is the future. We bet that doing it at the endpoint is more of a safe, compliant way to address this.Our philosophy is protecting all the endpoints, including all types of mobile devices, and every access point through those endpoints, including removable storage. That's where our DLP strategy will be centered and we feel the growth of Safeboot proves that we're making the right bet.Symantec could be right too -- maybe were both right -- because it's not like Vontu is doing poorly either.InfoWorld: Your smaller rivals, and some industry analysts, like to say that large companies such as Symantec and McAfee do not innovate, that they only acquire innovation through mergers and acquisitions. How does that strike you and why do you think they are wrong?Thompson: I think people might argue inappropriately that the sustaining innovation mission that any company with a large base of users has is forgotten about. We already have the 2008 versions of our products in marketplace. Is there any innovation in there at all? We certainly think so.There is a very important mission that we cannot overlook, and that is we have a bunch of customers who have an enormous amount of expectation of us being able to continue to deliver new features, functions, and capabilities for them that will migrate seamlessly from what they do today to what their needs might be tomorrow.We spend 15 percent of our revenue on research and development not because we want to spend it, but because we have to maintain some stream of innovation in order to be able to serve the needs of our existing customers.If you look inside the company, our Symantec Research Labs facility has delivered incredible innovative capabilities such as generic exploit blocking, or the ability to see vulnerabilities and create a signature to block an attack before the attack occurs. That's all about innovation. The fact that we are an acquisitive company means that we are open to people who have fresh ideas or a new view of the world.The security world has evolved so rapidly over the last five years that if we were stuck in a paradigm that said we will only deal with ideas that emanate from inside the company, we would be unable to serve the needs of our customers at all. The best way for a company that competes in all the segments of the market where we compete is to use strength of our balance sheet, cash, and income statement to continue to evolve.Consider all that in backdrop of the idea that the whole software industry is consolidating around us. You cannot ignore the broader macro-trend going on in the industry itself.There are fewer software companies today than there were a year ago, one year ago there were fewer than five years ago, and five years forward there will be fewer than there are today. The question is, can you evolve a process that is relevant for your customers, and relevant for your company as you think about targets that you bring into the company over time.DeWalt: It's a myth that companies our size don't innovate. Many products are being made almost one hundred percent in-house. Lots of the work in our new consumer technologies was an organic exercise, as with ePolicy Orchestrator. We didn't acquire anything to build that product, and if there's one product strategic to this company, EPO is that, and the list goes on.But, we also have to use the balance sheet and acquisitions because we can. It gives us the opportunity to grow. Maybe that looks externally like we don't have to innovate, but we're really doing both and making sure that we augment the strategy. It is a combination and we have to be good at balancing both things. Companies like McAfee have gotten mature because they're good at development and acquisition.Part of that is at blended shore development, we're moving sustained engineering and quality assurance to offshore locations like India and China. Innovation is coming from Beaverton, Ore., Santa Clara, Calif., and elsewhere where core development and Avert Labs sit.Those people don't want to do sustaining engineering on Windows 95, so we have to innovate that way so people who want to be working on the newest thing can do that.In reality the core of this company is focused on nothing but innovation. We do the other stuff in low cost locations, and if we didn't do that we would probably die.InfoWorld: Over the last several years we've seen many major IT platform providers, including Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, HP, IBM, and EMC make investments in acquiring security technologies and building their own security products.How has this shift toward the integration of security into the operating system, network and computer hardware, software and storage changed how you will direct your own companies going forward?Thompson: The reality is that what customers are trying to do in terms of managing access to applications and the ability to share information across the enterprise, both internal and extended, makes it incumbent upon all of us to recognize that securing that content is very important.?Many of the companies you referenced started their lives thinking that security was something that slowed down the machine, network access, or their sales. They finally came to the realization that security is an enabler and not an inhibitor and that they must embrace it one way or another.The real question becomes, where do customers think logically about security elements? If you look at what has evolved at Symantec, we have said that it's natural that some security technologies will live and reside in the network.Networks have become fast enough, deep packet inspection technologies have become good enough, and we assume that as time goes on more of that will occur. And the logical place for companies to do that is with the people providing network equipment, but that's only one place where you have to protect the stream of content, another is where the users interact at a desktop or server, or where it is being managed at the gateway or applications level.We're getting out of the network side, why compete with Cisco and Juniper and Alcatel? Why don't we partner with them and license our technologies to them because we'd like to have the scanners we have in place to become more ubiquitous, not less so. Let's move to where the user is interacting with the application, or where the application is managing the digital content. And while the competition there is no less fierce, it certainly is a place where we have real strengths that we think are worthy of us doubling down.There's also the issue of heterogeneity. Whereas someone like Microsoft is only focused on Windows, our largest customers still run mainframes, Unix, and have interests with Linux in the applications sphere. We have to address the real world heterogeneous technologies in use within our customers, while these companies are focused on securing their own technologies.DeWalt: One word describes our differentiation from these companies: heterogeneity.Large companies want freedom of choice of any platform with any OS with any technology. They don't want to get locked down with Oracle, EMC, or Microsoft who only support their own releases with their security products.How many people have moved to Vista so far? Would you trust your security requirements to a single vendor? Microsoft can tell you they will throw in security capabilities, so there's a battle between big vendors doing pieces of the stack, versus pure-plays.This goes back to conversations of best-of-breed small vendors versus best-of-breed large vendors, and it is turning into best-of-breed security versus gigantic companies with some security in their strategy.We bet that the cross-platform approach wins out. To support all is better than just supporting one vendor, whether for storage, the OS, or routers. Cisco is not exactly supporting Juniper anymore.Our goal with heterogeneity is to create freedom of choice for customers to leverage, and we don't think that many of them want to get locked into one vendor.
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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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Within days of the release of the security bulletin, there was proof of concept code available on the web. As the exploit was analyzed by various security groups, it was found that it was similar
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Blog: New behavior-monitoring protection for the desktop is designed to compliment features in existing Symantec products.
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To protect computer networks against attacks, students learn to 'think like a hacker.'
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The latest Symantec Threat Report can provide us with information, knowledge, and even a little bit of wisdom -- about what has truly become an epidemic and an avenue for organized crime.
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Blog: Symantec technology creates new protection for Internet Explorer users.
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Symantec is just weeks away from shipping a test version of the next major update to its&#160;Norton 360 desktop security and backup software, with the product expected to ship by the end of March.Norton 360 Version 2.0 will include new Web security and identity-theft protection features as well as a &quot;smart firewall&quot; that will use behavior-based analysis techniques to identify emerging threats. These security features are already shipping with Symantec&#39;s Norton Internet Security 2008 product, but Norton 360 will have a few tweaks designed to make it easier to administer as well.For example, the software can now be used to back up data to new types of devices such as iPods or Blu-ray drives, said Mark Kanok, a senior product manager with Symantec. &quot;We changed up a couple of things to make it a little more accessible and give the advanced users more control,&quot; he said.The new browser protection feature, formerly code-named Canary, blocks Web sites from installing malicious software via the browser, known as a drive-by download. These types of attacks are becoming increasingly common, security experts say.New Firefox and Windows registry cleanup and features are also planned.Norton 360 Version 2 will also include the Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response (SONAR) technology, which identifies new forms of malware by analyzing its behavior, as well as the Norton Identity Safe software, designed to protect against phishing attacks.Pricing for Norton 360 v.2 will remain unchanged, at $79.99 for a three-PC license, Kanok said. The new beta will ship by early January, at the latest, he said.