Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[joen]

In another thread, sturgess asks a key question:

Is NIS "broken"?

Here's a question for long-time forum users:

when was the last time that you saw _so many_ trojan/rootkit posts in this forum?

Before the usual apologists can make their non-technical, subjective (not objective) posts, look at the objective facts.

Trojan and rootkit related threads in other AV vendor forums:

AVG 2012 Home

2 of 31

Kaspersky Internet Security & Anti-Virus

1 of 53

Avast Free/Pro/Suite

0 of 45

Avira AV Premium and Internet Security

0 of 59

ESET NOD32 AV

0 of 50

MalwareBytes General

2 of 55

Grand Total:  5 out of 295, or 2%

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This forum, Norton Internet Security/AV

45 of 59

Total: 45 out of 59, or _76%_!

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The above does not count the pinned threads (usually posted by moderators) or moved threads.

The figures were as of the date/time that I looked at those forums.

More than three-quarters of all the (current) threads in _this_ forum are about trojans/rootkits!

History says that time after time when major corporations have a disaster on their hands, the ones that stonewall, deny, and provide no response are -- in the long run -- the ones with the worst long-term outcomes.

Symantec needs to be forthcoming to their customers instead of stonewalling.  Some useful information please.

Symantec did not participate in the AV-Comparatives tests earlier this year.

Their stated "reason" was that they refused to participate in the File Detection Test.

Is a trojan or rootkit a "file"?

Was it just a coincidence that they did not participate in the tests? 

Or did they know what the result would be.

[mp3jo Super Virus Trouncer]

I use NIS since many years on 2 pc.

Never had a trojan or rootkit on my computer(s).

There are many threads now with trojan / rootkit problems, because those users seem to get help in this forum.

There are only few other threads because NIS / N360 is a nearly perfect piece of software.

[neigh-ho-ma]

A few months back, there was a report of a company (unnamed) that hired out people to do demotion of rival products, as opposed to promotion of products via advertising.

There was also the blackmail threat and subsequent leak of programming codes that did damage to Norton's reputation.

It might just be coincidence or a concerted effort to denigrate a product or company.

So, we might never know the legitimacy of each and every one of the infection threads posted.  Until a spam filter is written for that sort of thing.

[Krusty13]

H joen,

Some people had infections before installing Norton,  some had been running multiple security products in real-time and some haven't patched all their vulnerable software.

You will hear often here that a layered security solution is required.  This includes making sure all programs are updated and current.  You should also protect your browser's.  Please see this article to learn more about disabling JavaScript.

I hope this helps you understand the situation a little better.

Dave.

[Toxic_wanderer]

I was thinking the same thing the other day. Virtually every second post is about a trojan infection. Seems an awful amount of people are having the same problem? Just doesn't make sense?

[huwyngr Norton Fighter]

Since I know I am not one of the the usual apologists making their non-technical, subjective (not objective) posts I'll just suggest objectively that you have a look at bleepingcomputer's forum on Am I Infected:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum103.html   

I just did a search there on Norton and on Kaspersky .... and it came up with the same number of pages of threads for each .......

Interestingly enough I also checked out Kaspersky when you posted in Sturgess's thread and firstly had the greatest difficulty from their Product pages in finding that they did have Forums and then any references to trojans ...... from which the obvious conclusion is that Kaspersky users know better than to ask for support and go to bleeping computer while Norton users are learning that Quads provides sterling (well NZ$ if you want to be objective) here in the Norton Forums.

How long have you been using Norton? How often have you been infected?

I've been using only Norton for security since WIN 95 days and I have never ever been infected by malware, trojans .....

[SendOfJive Norton Fighter]

Hi joen,

Not only is your post based largely on circular reasoning and ad hominem argument, but there seems to be a significant lack of full disclosure in your "facts" as well.  You cite other vendors' "general discussion" forum content as evidence that they do not have malware issues resembling those posted on the Norton forums.  Yet you do not mention that AVG, Kaspersky, Avast, Avira and Malwarebytes all have dedicated virus discussion or malware removal forums where users would post their remedialtion threads.  They all look pretty busy to me!

[joen]

jo:

> NIS / N360 is a nearly perfect piece of software

Nicht so!

You need to talk with the customers who identified the firewall failure _not long after NIS 2012 was released_. 

That would be last calendar year.

In case you missed it:  1) unchecked 2) external data.

That's indicative of an extremely low performance level of the developers.

You need to talk with the enormous number of customers with trojan/rootkit problems.  Huge.

And no useful information from Symantec on this subject.

NIS _2012_ is a far from perfect piece of software.

Nicht wahr?

[Bombastus]

You are looking in the wrong sub-forums. Avira, for example, has a dedicated virus problem forum:

http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Board&boardID=140&s=ab44b5148068e3f11c7e154a9bad5d8b1d64be...

W32/Patched.UB is their name for the ZeroAccess trojan, and there sure are more than one thread about it. Likewise with Kaspersky; they also have a dedicated malware removal sub-forum, so you won't see those kind of threads in the general support forum.

[SendOfJive Norton Fighter]

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Bombastus wrote:

You are looking in the wrong sub-forums. Avira, for example, has a dedicated virus problem forum:

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Hi Bombastus,

That was the point I was making earlier.  The only vendor forum that joen mentioned that does not use a separate board for virus discussions is ESET, which is hosted at Wilders.  Joen was making an invalid comparison, and even if his "objective facts" had been presented objectively, one could still not draw any conclusions about Norton from them anyway (if there are two posts about conficker at Avira and only one at Norton, is Norton twice as good??).  The only thing that I could determine was that there are people using a lot of different products who have encountered a patched services.exe problem.