Symantec Admits Its Networks Were Hacked in 2006 113
Orome1 writes "After having first claimed that the source code leaked by Indian hacking group Dharmaraja was not stolen through a breach of its networks, but possibly by compromising the networks of a third-party entity, Symantec backpedalled and announced that the code seems to have exfiltrated during a 2006 breach of its systems. Symantec spokesman Cris Paden has confirmed that unknown hackers have managed to get their hands on the source code to the following Symantec solutions: Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton Utilities, Norton GoBack and pcAnywhere."
Thanks a bunch (Score:5, Interesting)
As this includes a Corporate version, I'm sure enterprises just LOVE to hear that the company to whom they entrust a certain amount of their data security completely lied to them about the effectiveness of that security, and covered up the fact that future use of their product might be for naught.
I KNEW IT! (Score:5, Interesting)
Was working with a company that was dealing with some security issues in late 2008, and we found out that the source of the breach was going right through Norton like a hot knife through butter. However, just about any other security solution would stop it. At that time, we theorized that whoever had created the problem had some intimate/inside knowledge of Norton systems and we even joked that "Symantec better check who has their source code".
Good, maybe now we'll have GoBack etc file formats (Score:4, Interesting)
If someone with illegally-obtained source code anonymously posts the Ghost and other file formats AND posts a credible "here's how I reverse engineered the file formats" document, and others use it to create open-source software to read the software, will Symantec have any recourse against those who write, host, or use the resulting software?
Re:Thanks a bunch (Score:4, Interesting)
I am looking right now at a computer with 2 fully-loaded cores that has been viris scanning for 25 solid hours. This is typical. It starts up after EVERY login, then just sits and churns forever with no visible progress. Or sometimes it finishes after a few seconds.
Sometimes you go to run some other program and it will just freeze up until/unless you kill navx (if you're lucky enough to have admin rights).
Or you're sitting on a plane, and it decides now would be a fine time to fire up and drain your battery in 40 minutes.
I can't leave my email box open because it pops up every few seconds and says THREAT DETECTED! (probably in some old email in mail spool already marked as deleted), but you press OK to fix, and after a few seconds it says it failed to repair it, no other explanation, so it pops up a modal dialog box in front of whatever you're trying to do. This occurs a couple times per minute, forever.
I hate it.
Re:Thanks a bunch (Score:5, Interesting)
Some years ago at a previous job, IT decided that 10:30 am would be the perfect time to schedule a full scan of the computers. The rationale being that the computers wouldn't be hibernating or powered off.
So, promptly at 10:30 am, my machine would lock up and be 100% CPU and memory bound for about 2 hours or more. I asked IT to reschedule it, as it was interfering with my work .. they said no. I told them that I was going to bill them 2 hours/day for the time lost ... they said I can't do that (at the time, they billed customers $1500/day for me).
Then I finally told them that since I had local admin privileges, and unless they were willing to change it, I was simply going to uninstall the AV software ... which I ended up doing. And, when people started to uninstall it, they found they had no choice but to change the schedule ... because it was making it impossible for people to do their jobs and HR didn't like the fact that everyone was in the break room bitching about the fact that their computers were unavailable to them.
In my experience, most enterprise AV solutions cause more lost productivity than the things they're meant to prevent.
I'm about one upgrade of AVG away from finding an alternative ... because it suddenly decides that it wants to update, and that I need to reboot right now, or postpone as much as 60 minutes. The problem is that I'm using the computer for my job, and I will tell it when it can reboot or update ... but when it pops up a modal dialog while you're typing, with "OK" selected by default, you can get a case where you've clicked "sure, go ahead and reboot" before you even realize the dialog has been presented. So all of a sudden your machine starts shutting down out from under you.
AVG didn't always suck, but over the last few versions it has become nag-ware which wants to instal crap toolbars in my browser and otherwise do shit that I've not asked it to do.
The use of a modal dialog box that grabs focus should lead to someone being staked to an ant-hill in the hot sun -- I'm running more than your program, and just because you want to do something doesn't mean I don't get a vote.
Unfortunately, I find that AV in general is far more pushy and annoying about deciding it's in charge.