Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[garlen]

Folks,

It occurred to me that I have been using Norton DNS for a long time. I also do a lot of other things to protect our computers - but I wonder if anyone in the forum knows enough about Norton DNS to determine if its use might provide some level of protection from these trojans, etc. that are hitting so many Norton users?

[peterweb Worm Eliminator]

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garlen wrote:

Folks,

It occurred to me that I have been using Norton DNS for a long time. I also do a lot of other things to protect our computers - but I wonder if anyone in the forum knows enough about Norton DNS to determine if its use might provide some level of protection from these trojans, etc. that are hitting so many Norton users?

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Norton DNS would only protect you in the fact that it would not allow you to go to known suspect web pages that might contain the trojan. If you did manage to go to a site with a trojan, DNS would not protect you, but the other Norton security products would provide protection from known infections.

[garlen]

Thanks! So, a little bit of protection - at least from known-bad sites. Wonder how many of the folks who've been infected use Norton DNS - and how many who have not been infected do?

Any little thing could help...

[garlen]

Looks as if it may now be call Norton ConnectSafe, here's the URL for home users:

https://dns.norton.com/dnsweb/dnsForHome.do

I'm not sure if it does better than OpenDNS or an ISP's DNS service (which, I suspect, most people use) - but seems as if it wouldn't hurt and might help...

[dickevans Super RootKit Eradicator]

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garlen wrote:

Looks as if it may now be call Norton ConnectSafe, here's the URL for home users:

https://dns.norton.com/dnsweb/dnsForHome.do

I'm not sure if it does better than OpenDNS or an ISP's DNS service (which, I suspect, most people use) - but seems as if it wouldn't hurt and might help...

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Hi,

I can't comment on either of the other DNS servers but I would expect that Norton keeps theirs as up-to-date as possible. Being a part of a security software developer can't be a bad thing here.

[peterweb Worm Eliminator]

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garlen wrote:

Looks as if it may now be call Norton ConnectSafe, here's the URL for home users:

https://dns.norton.com/dnsweb/dnsForHome.do

I'm not sure if it does better than OpenDNS or an ISP's DNS service (which, I suspect, most people use) - but seems as if it wouldn't hurt and might help...

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OpenDNS or an ISP's DNS service do not filter dangerous sights. That is the added value of the Norton service.

[garlen]

So, maybe using Norton ConnectSafe (AKA Norton DNS) and cleaning/modifying the Hosts file (see "Blocking unwanted Web pages during surfing") might - and I emphasize "might" - help prevent some of these infections or help keep some of the folks that Quads and others have disinfected clean. Anything that can help proactively - even a little bit - would be a good thing at this point.

[Bombastus]

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garlen wrote:
 Anything that can help proactively - even a little bit - would be a good thing at this point.

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Sandbox your browser. Sandboxie is free, uses virtually no system resources, and is completely compatible with Norton.

You can harden it even further by only allowing some programs to start in the sandbox. For example, in my webbrowser sandbox, I only allow Firefox, Foxit Reader, dllhost.exe, cmd.exe (because Sandboxie uses it to empty the sandbox), plugin-container.exe, and FlashPlayerPlugin. I can visit any website, infected or not, including any with active drive-by downloads, and nothing unwelcome can execute and infect the system.

You don't have to impose such stricts restrictions, etiher. Even default settings protect superbly. If you visit an infected webpage with the sandboxed browser, and get a drive-by download, and the malware actually executes and installs, just empty the sandbox, and presto! It's gone. Anything that happens in the sandbox is contained within a secure folder, and can't get out of it and touch your real system.