Dell, Symantec product to handle SMB e-mail security
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E-mail security and data archiving for small and medium businesses reqires an "ecosystem," and Dell and Symantec hope to jointly provide that healthy environment with their new Secure Exchange.
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A product designed to protect Web surfers from phishing and pharming attacks is expected to ship on Monday. Symantec's Norton Confidential will be available from the Web site, with a shrinkwrapped version due in November.
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Blog: Symantec releases public betas for Norton Antivirus 2008 and Norton Internet Security 2008.
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(InfoWorld) - Retailers have begun taking orders for Symantec's next-generation desktop security software, and the product is set to ship in the middle of next month, according to Amazon.com. Symantec has been working on the software for more than a year and is heavily marketing it as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare and McAfee's Total Protection 2007. Like its competitors, Norton 360 can be used to back up files, and the software also delivers new encryption, hard drive clean-up, and password-protection features. The software, which is sold on an annual subscription basis, has been beta tested by more than 100,000 users since it was released in beta late last November. Symantec had said it was expecting to ship Norton 360 sometime in March, and over the past few days, Amazon has begun accepting orders for the product, which will be released to Amazon customers on March 15, according to the company's Web site. Norton 360, which can be used by as many as three PCs simultaneously, is list-priced at $76.99, but Symantec is offering a $20 rebate, putting the Amazon.com price at $56.99. That's a lower list price than McAfee's comparable Total Protection software, which lists at $99.99, but after rebates and pricing breaks, a three-license version of Total Protection can be had on Amazon.com for just $39.99. Windows Live OneCare has the lowest list price of the three products, just $49.95. It can be purchased on Amazon.com for $37.49.
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Trend Micro, a rival anti-virus firm to Symantec, made an announcement stating that it will offer its anti-virus and anti-spam security software for free to users until June, 2005.
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This Executive Bulletin details why it's more important than ever to protect email systems; review the tools and services available from vendors, and explain the key skills IT and security managers need to develop to effectively secure their e-mail systems. Download this Executive Bulletin, (a $195 value) for free, compliments of Ironport.
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Although Windows XP Service Pack 2 has been released to manufacturing, some of the world's leading antivirus vendors including Symantec and McAfee are still in the process of assuring compatibility. As these ISVs continue to perfect their code, a little known vendor called Eset has already beaten them to the punch.
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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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(InfoWorld) - The notorious Mpack hacker toolkit is installing malware that carries out its chores -- including spewing spam -- from within the Windows kernel, making it extremely difficult for security software to detect it, Symantec said Thursday. The Trojan horse that Symantec has dubbed "Srizbi" is being dropped onto some PCs by the multi-exploit Mpack, a ready-to-use attack application that until recently has been selling for around $1,000. Responsibility for a large-scale attack launched from thousands of hijacked Web sites last month was pinned on Mpack, as was a follow-up campaign waged from compromised Internet porn sites. Although Mpack can force-feed any malicious code to a commandeered PC, Symantec researchers said Srizbi stands out. Rather than follow the current practice of hiding only some activities with rootkit-cloaking technologies, Srizbi goes completely undercover. The new Trojan, said Symantec, works without any user-mode payload and does everything from kernel mode, including its main task: sending spam. "When Trojans go to spam, they go out to user land," said Dave Cole, director of Symantec's security response team, referring to malware writers injecting their code into visible Windows processes to carry out spam-sending tasks. "Srizbi, though, is basically using kernel libraries [to send spam]," said Cole. "It's calling the kernel libraries it needs." A blog entry by Kaoru Hayashi, a senior security response engineer at Symantec, spelled out the technical details. "Srizbi seems to move a step forward by working totally in kernel mode without the need to inject anything into user mode," wrote Hayashi. "To manipulate the network connection directly in kernel mode, it attaches NDIS and TCP/IP drivers and gets all the Ndis* and Zw* functions that it needs. This technique also allows the Trojan to bypass firewall and sniffer tools, and to hide all its network activities." Translation: Only advanced security tools will detect Srizbi. It's also the first full-kernel malware spotted in the wild. "It's evolutionary, not revolutionary, but it's indicative of what we see in the threat landscape," Cole said. "And if your security software is relying only on [Windows'] APIs to detect malware, you won't be protected. You need something that uses modern, anti-rootkit techniques." Cole added other information to the Srizbi story, in particular his suspicion that its author is probably the same hacker who created Rustock, a dangerous polymorphic Trojan from 2006 that also relied on rootkit technology to avoid detection. "It appears to be from the same author," said Cole. "He's been quiet for a while, and everyone has been waiting for Rustock 2.0. Some thought he'd maybe went away, but [Srizbi] uses some of the same components as Rustock." Cole expects Srizbi to follow a similar trajectory. "The pattern with Rustock seemed to be to get something out there that might be sloppy at first, but to evolve it over time. It's reasonable to believe that [Srizbi] will do the same." According to Symantec's research, the new Trojan is sloppy. "Users may be able to detect the presence of this malicious code via a registry key that happens to not be hidden by the rootkit component," said an alert to Symantec's DeepSight customers. The registry key to look for, said Symantec, is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\RcpApi\\"MachineNum" = "[six random digits-six random digits-two random digits]" In other Mpack-related news, a third Symantec security researcher said today that he's spotted the toolkit selling for as little as $150, an 85 percent reduction from its previous $1,000 price tag. "Considering the toolkit is written in a script language, it is easy to redistribute and modify," said Eric Chien, a Symantec security response engineer. "The sellers likely didn't even need to buy it themselves, but rather probably found some of the multiple Web sites that did not employ standard Web site protections, allowing them to download the whole kit for free. "Talk about clearance sales." Mpack's wider "distribution" spells trouble not only for the hacker -- suspected to be Russian -- who created the multiple-strike attack kit, but for users, too. "Its usage is likely to grow," said Chien. "In addition, without a single author controlling the distribution of the toolkit, we also expect to see forks of the source code with additional exploits, bug fixes, and other feature enhancements."
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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.
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. and Symantec Corp. plan to release a firmware-based PC security product in the first half of 2007 to stop hackers from disabling virus shields. This "virtual security solution" will run beneath the OS of a PC using Intel's vPro business bundle, such as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Compaq dc7700 or Lenovo Group Ltd.'s ThinkCentre M55p desktops. The product could help to slow the trend of viruses and malware attacks that succeed only because the target PC has already lowered its defenses, either because of a well-meaning user or a malicious earlier hack, said Leo Cohen, vice president of the security technology group at Symantec. "The trend is for the disabling or misconfiguring of security safeguards, so we will move security out of the user and operator environment," he said Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. "This is something Symantec takes seriously: How do you make your security solutions tamper-resistant? We're working with Intel to put security in the hardware, in the firmware," Cohen said. Security experts increasingly say thatÂ a PC's biggest weakness is its own user, not a faulty firewall or defective virus shield. No matter how much security policies and tools improve, they are worthless unless they're enforced by the IT department, said Malcolm Harkins, general manager of Intel's information risk and security division. TheÂ HP spy scandal has shown how easy it is for hackers to use "social engineering" tactics to breach defenses, whether they are obtaining private phone records by pretending to be account holders, or planting tracking software on a reporter's PC by embedding it in an e-mail with a fake news tip. Likewise, companies have learned from battling viruses like Code Red, Slammer and Nimda to use networked controls to push patches out to 95 percent of their PCs immediately. But they could spend just as much time and money patching the last five percent, and they can't rely on users to apply the updates themselves, Harkins said. "If you're using real-time antivirus, desktop firewall, data encryption and weekly hard drive scans, that could slow your system, so some end-users will turn that off," said Harkins. "People say the perimeter is vanishing, with extranets and mobile computing. But it's not vanishing, it's just just shifted to the people, and they can forget to update their antivirus or talk too loudly on a cell phone in an airport. If you ignore that component, that's going to be the thing that gets you every time." Indeed, IT administrators say that 28 percent of malicious attacks work because of compromised security, according to an August survey commissioned by Symantec. Whether that security is misconfigured because of employees, poorly-written OS and application patches, or hackers themselves, the trend is increasing, the survey said. Â
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BOSTON - Security appliance maker ServGate Technologies Inc. next week will announce a new line of products through Dell Inc.'s Web site, providing hardware with integrated antivirus, spam filtering and other security features for small businesses.
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SEPTEMBER 27, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - E-mail security systems vendor IronPort Systems Inc. is releasing new versions of its C-Series line of e-mail security appliances, with features that make it easier
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The latest six-month report on Internet threats shows a staggering breadth and complexity. Symantec Corp.&#39;s Internet Security Threat Report (http://enterprisesecurity .
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Blog: Symantec technology creates new protection for Internet Explorer users.
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The latest Internet Security Threat Report released today by Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) shows that because home users are less likely to have established security measures in place, they are being increasingly targeted by attackers for identity theft, fraud, or other financially motivated crime.
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InfoWorld - Retailers have begun taking orders for Symantec&#39;s next-generation desktop security software, and the product is set to ship in the middle of next month, according to Amazon.com.