Norton AntiBot goes into public beta
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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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Over the past month, a new type of malicious software has emerged, using a decades-old technique to hide itself from antivirus software.The malware, called Trojan.Mebroot by Symantec, installs itself on the first part of the computer&#39;s hard drive to be read on startup, then makes changes to the Windows kernel, making it hard for security software to detect it.Criminals have been installing Trojan.Mebroot, known as a master boot record rootkit, since mid-December, and were able to infect nearly 5,000 users in two separate attacks, staged on Dec. 12 and Dec. 19, according to Verisign&#39;s iDefense Intelligence Team. In order to install the software on a victim&#39;s computer, attackers first lure them to a compromised Web site, which then launches a variety of attacks against the victim&#39;s computer in hopes of finding a way to run the rootkit code on the PC.Once installed, the malware gives attackers control over the victim&#39;s machine.The group behind this latest rootkit is the same one responsible for the Torpig Trojan, and it is believed to have already installed more than 250,000 Trojan programs, iDefense said in a report on the rootkit published Monday.The interesting thing about Trojan.Mebroot is that it installs itself on the master boot record (MBR). This is the first sector of the computer&#39;s hard drive and it is the place the computer goes to first whenever it wants to boot up the operating system. &quot;Basically, if you can control the MBR, you can control the operating system and therefore the computer it resides on,&quot; wrote Symantec researcher Elia Florio in a blog posting on Trojan.Mebroot.The criminals are using several different versions of this attack code, some of which are not currently being detected by some antivirus products, iDefense said.&quot;At the moment the AV detection is hit and miss across the board, however in the last day a number of vendors have added detection for it already,&quot; said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Network Security. &quot;As for penetration, so far many people are showing it as having a low overall distribution. The concern is that the group which may be preparing to distribute the rootkit is well-prepared.&quot;Malicious software that infected the master boot record was common during the MS-DOS era, but it has not been used much in attacks in recent years.In 2005, however, researchers at eEye Digital Security gave a talk at the Black Hat security conference, showing how a rootkit could hide itself on the MBR. This Trojan.Mebroot software is derived from that code, iDefense said.Getting this kind of malicious software to work reliably is a technical challenge, and there have generally been easier ways for the bad guys to take over PCs in recent years, said Marc Maiffret, an independent security researcher who was chief technology officer at eEye when the code was first developed.Attackers were given a hand last year, however, when researchers at NV Labs published a proof of concept MBR rootkit.Maiffret said that while we may soon see more of these MBR rootkits, &quot;it won&#39;t take long for all the antivirus companies to react.&quot;&quot;It&#39;s not some new attack vector that&#39;s going to be hard to prevent,&quot; he said. &quot;It&#39;s just something that people haven&#39;t really paid attention to.&quot;
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Anti-virus companies are warning of a new variant of the Sdbot mass-mailing worm that installs a network sniffer in order to grab unencrypted passwords, apparently the first worm to do so.
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Symantec has unveiled new versions of its Norton security products--beefing up some of the real-time and automated features--and will release them in the next few weeks.
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Over the past month, a new type of malicious software has emerged, using a decades-old technique to hide itself from antivirus software.
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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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Amazon.com is taking orders for Symantec's Norton 360, a consumer all-in-one security suite meant to compete with Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare.
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Microsoft's beta version of its Windows AntiSpyware application is available for download.
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SEP 11.0 "Hamlet" goes way beyond basic antivirus protection; release is loaded with defenses against zero-day attacks, rootkits, botnets and identity theft.
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The product formerly known as "Hamlet" is about to be made publicly available. Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 will be relased to public beta during next week's Symantec Vision conference in Las Vegas.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Symantec launched new editions of its consumer Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security (NIS) software Tuesday, adding new browser defenses for some users in both packages and wrapping features from its new identity initiative into the suite. The 2008 versions boast several new features and enhancements, including something that Symantec is calling Browser Defender, which is behavioral-based technology that inspects all ActiveX, JavaScript, and VBScript code executing within Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. "It provides zero-day protection in the browser," said Ed Kim, the director of product management for Symantec's consumer products group, "but not just IE. It protects against attacks on any third-party application run within the browser, like QuickTime or Adobe [Reader]. Anything that has an ActiveX component." Browser Defender, which is integrated within both Norton AntiVirus 2008 and NIS 2008, is also able to see through attack code obfuscation techniques, claimed Kim. "Other security [applications] rely on a few simple de-obfuscation routines or look at the script itself. But we will wait until the threat uncloaks, then look at the [API] call before that call is made." Out of the gate, Browser Defender only protects users running Internet Explorer. Firefox users will have to wait. "We went with IE, given that it's the most prevalent browser," Kim said. Firefox support is in what Kim dubbed "the planning stage" with no timetable yet set. Other new features in NIS include Norton Identity Safe, the new name of the tool that Symantec has called Norton Identity Client since its January debut at the Demo 07 conference. Part of the company's long-range plan to move into identity protection, the addition to NIS is a first-generation effort to offer a tool that lets users control what information is transmitted to Web sites and fills in forms and password fields automatically. Both products are available immediately for download from Symantec's online store, and they will be available through retailers shortly, Kim said. Prices for the security software have not changed from last year: Norton AntiVirus 2008 sells for US$39.99, while NIS 2008 costs $69.99 for a three-PC license. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Symantec Corp. will kick off its annual Symantec Vision conference next week with the first public release of its next-generation corporate antivirus software, called Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0.
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Digital pest prototype infects files only found in early Windows code for AMD 64-bit Opteron processors.
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Updated antivirus software for businesses adds intrusion prevention features.
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SecureMac has introduced a free Trojan Detection Tool for Mac OS X.
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10.3.7 fixes bugs, fills security holes