Symantec Working on SiteAdvisor Alternative
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Symantec Corp. 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.
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Symantec on Tuesday introduced versions of its consumer and small business security software with updates that protect against network-scanning worms such as Sasser, and keep phishing attacks at bay.
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One day after Symantec&#160;researchers discovered software that attacked a critical&#160;unpatched vulnerability in RealNetworks&#39; media player, Real says that a fix for the issue is imminent.&quot;Real has created a patch for RealPlayer 10.5 and RealPlayer 11 that addresses the vulnerability identified by Symantec,&quot; wrote RealNetworks General Manager of Product Development Russ Ryan, in a Friday blog posting. &quot;Real will make this patch available to users via this blog and our security update page later today.&quot;Users of RealOne Player, RealOne Player v2, and RealPlayer 10 should upgrade to the 10.5 version of the product or the RealPlayer 11 beta code and should install the patch, Ryan said.The attack exploits a flaw in an ActiveX browser helper object, software that RealPlayer employs to help users who are experiencing technical difficulties, so the PC must be using the Internet Explorer browser to be affected by this particular attack, Symantec said.The attack only works on Windows systems, RealNetworks said. Linux, Mac and RealPlayer 8 users are not affected.Attackers were using a complicated network of advertising Web sites to launch the attack from a Web site that has been spotted hosting malicious code several times over the past two years, Symantec said.&quot;The exploit itself is embedded in advertisements that were being served by 247realmedia.com,&quot; Symantec said in a note on its DeepSight threat management system. &quot;The redirection to the exploit page... was accomplished through an iFrame embedded in each advertisement.&quot;Iframe is an HTML command that allows developers to insert a second Web page into the page being viewed. It is often used by malware creators because these iFrame pages can be as small as 1 pixel, making them invisible to the naked eye.Users who do not have the patch can turn off ActiveScripting within IE as a workaround to the problem. Very technical users can also set kill bit on the Class identifier (CLSID) FDC7A535-4070-4B92-A0EA-D9994BCC0DC5 to disable the ActiveX control, Symantec said.&#160;
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Wild and dynamic eBay users are being targeted by an advanced Trojan that attempts to redirect traffic so it can silently bid on a car from the auction site's car site, Symantec is warning. It is the latest security headache for eBay, which has faced an onslaught of complaints from some users who say fraud on the site has increased to unacceptable levels over the past few months.â¦
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A screensaver targeting spam-related websites appears to have been too successful.
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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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Symantec researchers are working on reputation-based security systems to verify the trustworthiness of Web sites and downloads.
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In an interview with BetaNews, Sophos senior security consultant Ron O'Brien talks about PatchGuard, a new Microsoft feature of Windows Vista that is the subject of a recent round of complaints by security vendor Symantec. While Symantec says PatchGuard gives Microsoft a platform for abusing its competitors, Sophos says it doesn't see a problem, for some compelling reasons.
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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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New features designed to alert users if the site they are visiting is legitimate or a phishing site.
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InfoWorld - Symantec is just weeks away from shipping a test version of the next major update to itsÂ Norton 360 desktop security and backup software, with the product expected to ship by the end of March.
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Symantec is to stop classifying a software utility that enables Chinese surfers to view blocked websites as a Trojan horse. The reassessment follows stories earlier this week questioning the designation of
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Here is a comparison of Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare and upcoming products from Symantec and McAfee.
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Also: Visual Studio and SQL Server updates Microsoft is prepping a security software suite that will take it deep into Symantec and McAfee heartland. They won't be quaking in their boots just yet: the suite, called Stirling, hits the streets in 2009, at the earliest.â¦
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Microsoft's consumer security software changes the AU (Automatic Updates) settings in Windows XP and Vista without telling users or getting their approval, a researcher said Thursday -- behavior that may explain recent reports of patches being installed and systems rebooting without permission.When Microsoft responded to new charges of silent changes last week, however, it denied that AU settings were ever altered without user approval, and it didn't mention OneCare as a possible culprit.Scott Dunn, an editor at the "Windows Secrets" newsletter, reported Thursday morning that OneCare silently changes AU settings as it installs. No matter what AU setting the user selected previously, OneCare's installer quietly changes it to the fully automatic option."Some security products have turned on AU in the past," said Dunn, who also tested several other current consumer suites, including Symantec's Norton 360 and Norton Internet Security, McAfee's Internet Security Suite, and Check Point Software's ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. "But OneCare was the only guilty party."OneCare's willful way with AU may be an explanation for the reports two weeks ago of machines downloading and installing the Oct. 9 set of security fixes even though their owners had explicitly instructed Windows to ignore all downloads or notify them before they were installed.Several days later, after it wrapped up an investigation, Microsoft said AU settings were never changed without user consent, and it blamed absent-minded users for making modifications and then forgetting that they had."I find this surprising and very disturbing," said Dunn. "If they're going to change [AU] settings, they should let you know."Four options, down to one In both Windows XP and Vista, users can select from four options in AU: Download and install all updates automatically; download files but do not install them without user consent; check for but neither download nor install without permission; and disable Automatic Updates entirely.OneCare, sold for $49.95 and offered as a free 90-day trial, sets AU to the first, and all-automatic, setting, said Dunn, on both operating systems. "It does that even if Automatic Updates is completely disabled," he added. If users later uninstall OneCare -- for instance, after a trial has expired -- the software does not return the machine to the earlier settings; they must be reset by the user."Worse, OneCare silently turns on [Windows] services that have been disabled by the user," Dunn said, referring to the two services that some users, frustrated at earlier incidents in which Windows retrieved and installed patches without permission, have manually turned off: Automatic Updates and Background Intelligent Transfer Service. The services can be switched off manually using the Windows services.msc utility. Normally, once disabled, they remain that way until the user manually turns them back on.ComputerWorld confirmed Dunn's account of OneCare's AU changes by installing the security suite on both Windows XP and Windows Vista.At no time during installation, said Dunn, does OneCare tell the user that the software will modify Windows' settings or provide an opt-in dialog. Nor do the various online documents -- including Microsoft's privacy statement and an addendum for OneCare -- that are offered up early during the process contain any information about the changes. "It turns out there's a brief mention of it buried deep in one of the OneCare help files," said Dunn. "But that's not the same as telling users upfront."The help file (select "What does Windows Live Update do to help manage and maintain my computer's software updates?" to view the pertinent section) acknowledges that OneCare makes changes without bothering to ask. "When you first install Windows Live OneCare, setup automatically enlists your computer in Microsoft Update and changes your computer's settings to download and install updates automatically using Automatic Updates," it reads.Who's 'forgetful' now? Although Microsoft was not immediately available for comment this morning, it made it clear last week that reports of unauthorized updates, and even PC reboots, could not be blamed on its software."I want to stress that the Windows Update client does not change AU settings without users' consent," said Nate Clinton, a program manager with the Microsoft Update team in a company blog entry a week ago. He went on to list five possible explanations; all require the user to take action or accept one option from several offered.Earlier, a Microsoft spokeswoman had been more blunt. "It may be more a case of someone clicking to change their AU settings but not realizing/remembering doing so," she said last Tuesday. She also called out OneCare's installation as one such possible moment and claimed that the security suite offered users the option of changing AU settings. It does not."This is just one more example of Microsoft having the attitude that we know better than you do, that you should just stop asking questions and let us do what we want," said Dunn.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Striking out against spammers (sounds good already!) Lycos have developed a screensaver that should help to put the nasty blighters out of business.
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Symantec is warning users of the RealPlayer media software to be extra careful while surfing the Web.