Hackers Released Norton AV Source Code, Says Symantec

[exfileme]

There's another dump of old Symantec source code residing in Torrent Land, this time in the name of the LulzSec members arrested earlier this week.

Hackers Released Norton AV Source Code, Says Symantec : Read more

 

[synd]

Was it really worth it?

 

[silver565]

The irony of a security software company being hacked is quite amusing

 

[Guest]

If nothing else, these leaks at least confirm my suspicion that Norton does, in fact, protect their data with copies of their own software.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Norton Antivirus 2006? Really? Lulz...

 

[juan83]

Norton sucks. never like it.

 

[NatureTM]

I thought Anon considered themselves hacktivists. This helps the bad guys find holes in this AV software, making it easier for them to get control of more boxen. That doesn't seem very positive.
I'm also a bit skeptical of Norton's claim that the release doesn't impact the effectiveness of newer editions, unless the new ones are a complete rewrite. My guess is that some of the old code still exists in the recent releases.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

Norton Systemworks 2001 was good. After that...forget it.

 

[rex86]

"...As we have already stated publicly, this is old code, and Symantec and Norton customers will not be at an increased risk as a result of any further disclosure related to these 2006 products." I'm sure it doesn't. /irony

 

[elcentral]

i had 2 friends ho owned Norton 2 ears ago and they had pc problems, installed avg and it found 5 viruses in Norton and around the pc fixed all the problems at no cost.

 

[Guest]

"The good news is that the leak doesn't pose as a threat to the millions of subscribers who have the software installed on their system."


So an antivirus that's utterly useless at detecting/stopping/removing viruses in the first place won't be any worse off with it's source code out in the wild? Makes sense.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]elcentral[/nom]i had 2 friends ho owned Norton 2 ears ago and they had pc problems, installed avg and it found 5 viruses in Norton and around the pc fixed all the problems at no cost.[/citation]

I've seen countless problems with Norton, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, Avira, ClamWin, BitDefender, TrendMicro... the list goes on. No AV on the planet finds everything out there. When we have an infected system, we generally do 8-10 different virus scans on it, nearly all of them finding stuff.

The worst problems a few years ago were from Norton. Today, it's Kaspersky and McAfee. Norton was re-written maybe 2 years ago and has shown positive improvements. Detection rates are always around 50% for these antivirus programs, so it comes down to how often it messes up windows that makes a particular AV a bad or good choice. I still see many systems with AVG problems today. Mostly it's "it wants to reboot my computer every single day".

 

[teknomedic]

[citation][nom]beayn[/nom]I've seen countless problems with Norton, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, Avira, ClamWin, BitDefender, TrendMicro... the list goes on. No AV on the planet finds everything out there. When we have an infected system, we generally do 8-10 different virus scans on it, nearly all of them finding stuff.The worst problems a few years ago were from Norton. Today, it's Kaspersky and McAfee. Norton was re-written maybe 2 years ago and has shown positive improvements. Detection rates are always around 50% for these antivirus programs, so it comes down to how often it messes up windows that makes a particular AV a bad or good choice. I still see many systems with AVG problems today. Mostly it's "it wants to reboot my computer every single day".[/citation]

^^ This... If you really know your anti-virus stuff this is the exact statment you should make.. not the "I use this because it found that when another failed or this AV sucks, but this AV is awesome and perfect".

There is not "perfect" or fool-proof AV product and the "best one" changes year to year... and sometimes month to month.

I felt I had to comment on your post "beayn" because I rarely see this type of smart reply. Thank you.

 

[carlhenry]

bd and kaspersky are the most reliable. most free AV's have a bunch of FALSE positives which amuses my mom or dad and says that avg / avast were better.

 

[tomfreak]

I am still waiting them to release those games with always online DRM source code. ..

Games with DRM always online should be crack and modded heavily to send developer a deep lesson not to mess with gamers.

 

[memadmax]

MAybe some good can come out of the code dumps....

Like maybe someone can figure out how to make the software actually run at a decent speed...

>_>

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]Norton Antivirus 2006? Really? Lulz...[/citation]

There are people who hang onto old anti-virus programs, even if they're no longer supported. My dad refused to upgrade from McAfee OAS 2005 (or 2007), he thinks all antivirus programs are the same regardless of brand. I'm fairly sure McAfee already abandoned their OAS products since they announced they were phasing it out back in 2009.

 

[Guest]

What about Microsoft Security Essentials? Is it a good reliable anti-virus program?

 

[f-14]

norton in the mid to late 2000's sucked, it couldn't find a virus even if it replicated infront of it's nose. that's why everybody was recommending NOD when it came out.
norton has since scrapped it's code based in that era and had to rewrite everything just to get a respectable product back on the market that wasn't losing share by the 10,000's per day

 

[SteelCity1981]

they hack a source code on a software that's 6 years out of date from the current software.....