Symantec Users Beware!

[nihil]

People who use Symantec security products need to be particularly careful that they keep the product, and not just the pattern/signature files up to date.

http://www.snpx.com/cgi-bin/news55.cgi?target=191288405?-2622

It seems that there is at least one malware author who has "got it in" for Symantec (Norton) and is specifically targetting their products.

I would suggest that you should take this approach with all widely used applications that you have, as there has been an increase in application rather than operating system based exploits.

[alakhiyar]

Yeah, application vulns are becoming a big problem.

When I built this PC, I took the opportunity to create a spreadsheet with every bit of software it has installed, the version, the date I last checked for an update (or a note that I have enabled and trust the automatic updater), and the URL to check. It's a bit of housekeeping, but it's probably the only way I'm going to be able to keep up with these things.

[nihil]

I don't want to sound like a prophet of doom, but "free" software such as AV and firewalls would seem likely targets given that they usually function with elevated privileges?

Right now I would say that the lowest hanging fruit has to be Adobe Acrobat?

Folks might like to give this a try:

http://www.visagesoft.com/products/pdfreader/

It is an alternative free PDF reader ;)