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A Bad Week for Symantec
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Mar 01, 2007 08:21 PM
from the seen-better-days dept.
from the seen-better-days dept.
Evan Hughes writes "NeoSmart Technologies has published a scathing editorial regarding 3 high-profile mistakes by Symantec Corp. — all in less than a week. In what seems to be a string of stupid mistakes culminating in the infection of CNN-parent Turner Broadcasting Systems by Rinbot— a virus dedicated to the eradication of Symantec from the known world."
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maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they're not mistakes... maybe it's just a form of viral marketing.
With all due respect... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm so glad I moved out of software maintenance and into hardware maintentance. Now I just wipe harddrives clean as a whistle and make sure the hardware works. Such a load off!
Re:With all due respect... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:With all due respect... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No great loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No great loss (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:No great loss (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, somewhere in 1990, Peter Norton sold things to Symantec. They (Symantec) continued to associate themselves with Peter Norton up until 2001 or so. About that time is the consensus that things went downhill. I'm not certain how much involvement Norton had with Symantec up until that point, but I'm willing to speculate that when the two parted companies, that's when Symantec began their transformation into selling the crap they do now.
Gosh, I miss the good ol' days of Norton Utilities and the like...in DOS nonetheless. Now there was a powerful piece of software that was truly easy to use. The UI actually showed you some shred of respect that you knew what you were doing.
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So this is kinda obvious, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm hmm hmm people are dumb.
Re:So this is kinda obvious, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't like Symantec products because they make the life of a sysadmin *more difficult*.
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Is this guy serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, doesn't Free AVG only update once a week as well?
Re:Is this guy serious? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Is this guy serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for... well, it doesn't matter. In our facility absolutely NO patches or virus definition updates are applied without first being approved by another group whose sole job it is to make sure these pathces don't affect something critical to our operations. Furthermore, we only download our defs from approved (IE our own) sources so as to ensure that we are ONLY downloading what's already been tested.
In short, we are all professionals and we should be capable of ensuring that our defs are up to date. We don't need (nor will we allow them to in our case) Symantec to hold our fuckin' hands throughout this process. When I install a corporate virus scanner, I fully expect to have to configure the machine policies in order to match our IT policies. If somebody's only updating their definitions once a week, then that's not Symantec's fault. That's the fault of whatever sysadmin was too stupid to properly configure his software.
That said, I still think Symantec's a piece of shit and I wish we were allowed to use other solutions in its place, but that's not for me to decide. Their management software is no where near as feature rich as EPO, and I seem to have to spend more time dealing with Symantec issues than I do with EPO issues. (Because, yes, we do monitor our machines each day to ensure that they are updating properly. CNN we are not.) Please don't think for a minute that I like defending Symantec. I just believe in placing the blame properly where it belongs, and in this case it's the idiot sysadmins who weren't doing their job.
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Symantec - semantics (Score:5, Funny)
That's not a virus. That's a feature.
Why is this is only news now? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Estimates are 100-150 million machines are currently part of botnets
2. Loss estimates exceed 200 billion annually on a global basis
3. Over 80% of all spam comes from botnets
Yes, I can cite. Or you can Google. They are all easy to find.
This is a HUGE problem that is, in many ways, like spam was in 1996 or 1997. The technical community acknowledges it, the average consumer has no clue, and, left unaddressed the problem and associated looses will get much, much worse.
Sounds as Though Turner Made One Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Updates (Score:5, Insightful)
People often don't update their software for years at a time. Hey, it costs. Which is why NAV is designed to update itself automatically. You just have to configure it correctly.
I'm no fan of Symantec. It's perfectly true that they're badly run. Hey, they used to be a lot more than a "security software" company, but all their other business (natural language databases, compilers, IDEs, desktop software, backup software) just died on them. But to blame them for the ineptitude of the CNN's IT department is idiotic.
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Astroturfing (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to wonder how much of it is simply astroturfing by disgruntled former employees? When there's a negative op/ed piece on a "software development and security research" website where none of the SQL even works, I just have to wonder if some no-talent assclown is pissed off because he lost his helpdesk or HR job.
First thing I Uninstall is Symantec (Score:4, Interesting)
No sweat off my nose.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I substitute Free-av.com for Norton- better infection detection, less memory overhead, free (with the option of buying a license- I usually guilt them into doing it), and nightly upgrades.
Can you say AVAST? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I don't work for them, or own stock. They've even updated it for Vista. The cost? Register for a free serial number every 14 months.
Comodo firewall http://www.comodo.com/ [comodo.com] is nice free step up for those who think they need something more than Windows firewall.
In the year 2007, there is really no need for a consumer to pay for a product from Symantec/Norton, McAfee, or any other security software vendor that has been fleecing us for the last several years.
Re:AVG (Score:5, Funny)
Since we're talking about Windows machines, I can tell you for certain which comes first.
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Re:AVG (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, I'll get you the data.
Main server has rebooted twice in the last four months for security patches, total ~19 minutes downtime.
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Re:How much will it take? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:How much will it take? (Score:4, Funny)
when the OS let's Steve ballmer and Microsoft know when you are in the shouse so a guy can show up dressed as clippy and forcibly anal rape you.
Yes, it will have to get that bad before the sheeple out there actually switch.
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Re:Just in time for us to migrate to Symantec (Score:4, Informative)
We've got an AV server and all of our clients are managed. We set the server up to check Symantec every two hours for updates and those updates are pushed down to the clients almost immediately.
Need to install all of your clients to the latest version (say from 9 -> 10)? Click Tools | Install Client Remotely and push it down from a central location.
We check our clients and any computer that is more than a week out of date is turned on and updated.
The only reason I can think of that so many people are complaining is because they've only used the consumer version. When we get student laptops we immediately remove it and install the corporate version that is free for them. I've never had a problem uninstalling the trialware version of the AV that ships with so many laptops.
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