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Thread: Symantec held info about a big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it ....

  1. #1
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    Symantec held info about a big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it ....

    I was just reading an article that the big security firm Symantec held info about a big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it.
    The threat is the Slammer worm that did quite a lot of damage in January.
    Symantec being the nice people they are "Shared the information only with "SELECT CUSTOMERS" [ which of course means people with lots of money,, ooh guess that leaves us out, but oh well], while the rest of use were of course being bombarded by Slammer.
    What does Symantec do next they boast about how they had discovered the worm way ahead of time,, then delivered timely alerts and procedures to DeepSight users. Which that would be us oh I forgot we dont have a subscription to DeepSight.
    Of course this made many people very angry.
    Really shows you how most companies think about money first and then the customers.
    I was wondering what people think of this ...
    To read the whole story go to the following link below:

    http://www.mickeytheman.com/boardnat...4899c4d165.htm

    After reading this I think that I might just change my AV software.
    Operation Cyberslam
    \"I\'ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.\" Author Unknown
    Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit
    Proyecto Ututo EarthCam

  2. #2
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    Thats good reading..

    The damage from the Slammer worm did not rival that of the 9/11 attacks, but it did manage to temporarily fry much of the Internet. Telecommunications systems in Asia and Europe were swamped, some North American ATM machines ceased to spit out cash, and several airline reservations systems shut down.
    If symantec is trying to spoil there customers, there going a little too far.

  3. #3
    Intresting to know this things. The question which rises is:
    "is this the first time ?????? and will it be the last time???????"

    The FACT that people ignore FACTS
    doesnt mean that FACTS are not FACTS

  4. #4
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    If this is an attempt to get more people to buy NAV 2004, its not going to be their last time..
    Go look at the ratings they recieved from other users over here

  5. #5
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    Norton was ok when I needed it and I sure as hell liked it better than I did Mcfee. But indeed... I also dislike the direction Norton is going.

    As for slammer what must be remembered here is like MSblaster for example there was a patch for the exploit long before there was a worm useing it. The same can be said about SQL slammer.

  6. #6
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    Thats a good point there was a patch out long before there was a worm to use the hole.
    Still I think symantec should inform everyone at the same time about security issues they find. Not just a select few with $$. I'm still going to use them because I have for years. But if they continue down this road. I'm going to look for alternatives very soon.

  7. #7
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    Wow... those are horrible reviews for NAV2k4...

    My suscription is about up in a month of so too...

    Looks like its almost time for a backup/format/reinstall.... NIS2k3 works wonderfully for me.

    I don't think its fair for them to hold the info and give it to select customers.
    Its the more of the home users PCs that were slamming the internet... not as much the corporations (due to multilayer protection/firewalls/patches/etc)...

    Its more of the home users and small businesses who don't have security personnel or even an IT dep. to make sure they are protected and up2date.

    As long as they can hear "You've got mail!"... thats all they care about.
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

  8. #8
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    Welcome to the world of big business.
    Check out the Big Brain on Brad!

  9. #9
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    I think it is silly of all of you to expect a company to share data that they are spending a lot of money to gather. Running the collection nodes and paying the analysts that are the backbone of the deepsight system is not a cheap thing to do.

    If you think symantec is the only company that does this, you are sadly mistaken. Just about every security/AV monitoring company in the world sees threats ahead of time and let's their biggest customers know ahead of time.

    NAI is the anti-virus vendor that my employer uses and we will receive a call from our account manager as soon as a critical virus/trojan is detected. This is usually anywhere from 4-6 hours before the threat is publicized. Mainly because most AV vendors will not publish data about a threat until they have a dat file that will detect the threat. We get this kind of service because we pay top dollar to have it. That is just the way of the world.

    Nobody is going to provide this type of service for free. It just costs to much money to do it.

  10. #10
    Wow, thats really lame they only let the people with the $$ know about it ahead of time...

    It reasons like this that I've been praising Panda AV for the last almost year. Not only do they share their info with all their customers, but they had virus definitions already availble to be downloaded for all of the latest big ones, before they hit. (including slammer, SoBig, Blaster, etc)...

    So anyone using their products, even if they haven't done the MS patches yet, were protected from those viruses via the automatic daily virus definition downloads...

    RRP

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