Norton Protection Blog

We are very excited to release Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus 2011. After undergoing months of Beta testing, getting feedback from our enthusiastic Norton community and incorporating much of that feedback, we are finally releasing what we think are our best products to date. Here's an overview of the key features and tools in the product which has just become publicly available today.

Many consumers still do not use antivirus software, or they use software that is not updated or effective. As a result, their systems can become infected with malware that is extremely difficult to remove. Worse, malware authors routinely attempt to evade or disable security programs. Many will prevent these programs from even installing. For all these reasons, users who end up with an infected computer often need more aggressive techniques to handle detection and remediation. Enter the all new, free and available-to-anyone Norton Power Eraser...

Given some recent negative publicity aimed at AMTSO we want to collectively clarify some key points. Read more...

It's been an exciting year since we shipped SONAR 2 in the Norton 2010 products. During this time, we have won the praise and accolades of users and reviewers alike. We even caught the attention of many malware authors who tested our protection and had a hard time trying to bypass it! We are happy to have offered such an exceptional level of protection to the Norton community and we are thrilled about the new and improved SONAR 3 engine shipping with NIS 2011. Read more...

We're very excited to release the first Beta of Norton AntiVirus 2011 and Norton Internet Security 2011. A lot of work went into the 2011 products, and we invite our Beta testing community to provide us with feedback. The betas are available for download now at www.norton.com/beta. Here's an overview of what's new and notable in Norton 2011.
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Today, we're excited to announce the availability of public betas of our flagship products, Norton Internet Security 2011 and Norton AntiVirus 2011. If you're interested in testing them, they're now available for free download from our Beta site at www.norton.com/beta. Here, our performance guru Dong "DC" Chung talks about the continued commitment to being the fastest, lightest security products on the market. Read more...

Norton Ideas is a site that will allow you to submit your product feature suggestions directly to the Norton product development team.

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The wait is over. Apple has, finally, entered the tablet market with the iPad. Mike Romo, Sr. Product Manager for Mac products, has some initial thoughts...
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Over time, once-zippy computers can start to lag, getting bogged down with unnecessary programs, too many temporary files, broken registry keys and all sorts of other digital gunk. Today we're announcing the newest weapon in the fight against PC sluggishness and data loss.
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Bad reruns used to be limited to summer TV programming. With Microsoft Security Essentials, bad reruns have now come to consumer security. But instead of just being boring and unoriginal, this rerun leaves consumers dangerously under-protected.
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Symantec Senior Development Manager Gavin Anderson explains Norton SafeWeb Technology:

We’re excited to tell you about the new and improved version of Norton Safe Search, now available as part of the Norton Internet Security 2010 public beta. Norton Safe Search takes the site ratings provided by Norton Safe Web a step further by delivering a fully customized search results page with built-in security features such as filtering out unsafe sites, an interstitial warning page, Privacy Safeguard, and other options such as allowing users to display only safe shopping sites. Read more...

Gerry Egan, Product Manager for Symantec, explains the new Reputation-based security technology in the upcoming Norton 2010 product release.

The message might have come in early yesterday on your Twitter feed, "Want to know whos stalking you on twitter!?: http://twitviewer.net/" You might have clicked the link to visit the website. It all happened so fast, the fabulous offer (heck yeah, I want to know who the last 200 people are to look at my Twitter profile!) and the large scale distribution of the "tweet". Even seasoned journalists who should always wear their cynical and world-weary thinking caps fell for it. Read more...

There's evidence that the Conficker botnet (oh, did you really think they distributed those millions of bots without a plan to monetize them?) is now being used on a "for hire" basis. A story from the UK referencing a new report from Cisco, states that malware called Waledec is being distributed via Conficker's millions of infected computers. Waledec uses your system to send out spam and spread itself to other computers. Before you pull your hair out in frustration, just make sure you've got an up-to-date copy of Norton Internet Security or another comprehensive security product on your computers. Check your kid's computers including any new netbooks you've received and scan your USB or thumb drives for signs of infection. Read more...

Symantec Architect and Distinguished Engineer Sourabh Satish discusses an enhanced feature for Norton Internet Security 2010 - SONAR 2:

You might have heard a few things about a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer this week. This is otherwise known as a “zero day” because it was found and hasn’t been patched by Microsoft at the time of discovery. Read more...

Symantec Development Manager Viral Mehta shares a new feature of Norton Internet Security 2010 -- Download Insight:

Welcome to the Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton AntiVirus 2010 Public Beta! We’re really excited about his year’s version of Norton Internet Security 2010 and Norton AntiVirus 2010. We’ve made significant improvements to our existing features, as well as added a few new ones. We’ve also included support for Windows 7, the new upcoming version of Microsoft’s popular operating system. To access the Public Beta build, simply navigate to Norton Beta Center and select Norton Internet Security 2010 or Norton AntiVirus 2010. Read more...

A new wave of phishing attacks on Facebook users is underway. You'll remember the story from several months back of someone whose login credentials were stolen and then the crook used that Facebook access to swindle the victim's friends out of thousands of dollars. The current effort resembles that one, in that a compromised account sends a malicious link to friends. The friends click on the link and are taken to a site that looks just like a Facebook login page. Providing the criminals with their login and password can sometimes injure the victim beyond the damage to their social network. Read more...

We’ve been hearing a lot about cloud computing lately. Seems like just about anything you can tuck away into the clouds gets better, or so the story goes, since it allows everyone to access it from anywhere and harness the power of humongous databases full of useful information, among other benefits. Sure enough, the recent RSA conference had its fair share of hype on cloud computing and it has been mentioned to do everything from change security as we know it to solving the imminent swine flu pandemic. On the heels of RSA, a new “cloud antivirus” (AV) solution has been introduced which has brought media attention to cloud-based malware protection to a fever pitch. Given all the chatter on the topic, I thought I would provide my own forecast (of sorts) for cloud-based AV. Read more...

There's a lot of talk about vulnerabilities in Safari, but what does it mean? Read more...

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Zombies!!!! Read more...

Ever had one of those days? You really intended for things to go right, but they didn’t. And they didn’t simply whimper out of existence, but left large, smoking holes in the living room carpet. That was this Tuesday. In truth, it began on Monday evening around 4:30pm Pacific when we released a patch, the infamously named “pifts.exe”... Read more...

There have been a few questions around PIFTS.exe in the past 24 hours. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it safe? How is Symantec addressing it? Here we continue to address this diagnostic patch that Symantec released yesterday and why it caused such a stir. Read more...