Should I be surprised? I have had about 5 or 6 different Trojan and worm viruses in the past 5 years. In ALL cases, the first thing the virus has done is take out Norton! I wonder why the world's top anti-virus software consistently seems so vulnerable to attack. Yesterday I got some kind of virus on my computer which immediately took out Norton. I eventually got Norton to reinstall after several attempts. I ended up booting in Safe Mode, running Norton Delete to remove all traces of Norton, then reinstalling. My efforts were hampered by the Norton downloader which kept wanting to install an Asian version of NAV on my computer! Yet I was on an English site and the URL was clearly telling me it was an EN version!! I eventually found the correct English version of NAV and downloaded it manually. I downloaded the latest definitions, ran a complete scan, and nothing was detected.
I also downloaded the latest definitions of my anti-spyware software and ran a scan. Again, nothing was detected.
In frustration I downloaded AVG Free and ran a scan, which immediately detected a Trojan Backdoor virus in rkill.exe and quarantined the virus. Problem solved.
I pay a lot of money each year to Norton for reliable anti-virus software yet it consistently lets me down. How come AVG, a free anti-virus program, can detect a virus which appears to be quite old, yet Norton was oblivious to any infection??