Zero-interaction remote wormable hijack hole blasts Symantec kit

Scores (or thousands, or millions) of enterprise and home Symantec users are open to remote compromise through multiple now-patched (where possible) wormable remote code execution holes described by Google as 'as bad as it gets'. The flaws are "100 percent" reliable against Symantec's Norton Antivirus and Endpoint according to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Another nail in the coffin for Norton Suckurity.

[nuked]

Taking the proverbial...

****.

For every disease there is a cure that's 10x worse.

[Pascal Monett]

Symantec has officially hit the bottom

For years, Symantec's reputation has been going down. Norton has ballooned ever more with bloat, impossible features and what clearly seems to be inefficient/bad coding.

Now just having Norton installed means you are at risk of being pwned without being able to do anything about it, and practically through no fault of your own.

You had a waterproof submarine, but Symantec installed a screen door in the back.

Well, this news won't do anything to Symantec's reputation for me, it was already rock bottom. I'm just wondering if they'll start digging now.

[s. pam]

Serves them right

Karma's a bitch Symantec and fucking over thousands of employees comes back to bite! Wouldn't be at all surprised that the brainpower that could have averted this got ejected like human hubris at some point in the last several rounds of layoffs.

I wonder if their Data Center Security and ATP products are affected as well as they use the same engines?

[Goopy]

Re: Serves them right

Yes, of course they are!

[leexgx]

this bit was interesting

"Some of those platforms cannot be upgraded. The many users of pirate copies of Symantec's products would also likely be affected since many cracked applications block update mechanisms."

never looked at cracking it my self (i get it cheap enough any way)

i use norton on normal systems that is paid for + other protection

[patrickstar]

If you for some reason decide you need an AV, why the hell would you ever pay for one? Avast is free and certainly a lot more effective and less horrible than Norton in all aspects.

[Charles 9]

Too noisy and too nagging. I want one that does everything on the QT. None of the free scanners are quiet.

[patrickstar]

MSE, or whatever it's called today...?

[Charles 9]

Windows Defender, it's now known. And at least it's better than nothing. The closest thing I've found to what I want is ClamAV, but the UI is too clunky and its report format leaves a lot to be desired.

[Anonymous Coward]

Symantec cripples machine more than a virus

Mandatory at work (hence AC)

It degrades performance of my machine far more than a virus / trojan would (as nobody would write a trojan that was such an obvious glutton of cpu, disk I/O as Norton / Symantec as you want a nasty (bar ransomware) to slip under the radar not grab attention).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Symantec cripples machine more than a virus

Hear Hear

[Anonymous Coward]

Auditors

If I show this to my auditors will they finally let me run my operation without AV? Didn't think so.

And before I get downvoted, don't think for a minute I don't have other, much more effective, mitigations in place. I haven't trusted AV to stop anything for a long time.

[Adam 1]

With all these holes, it's a good thing Symantec aren't implicated in any other questionable security practices.

/I'll grab my coat. I think its the blue one over there.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Decomposing composers!

So is this decomposition a furtherance of what we had last month?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel protected mode architecture

Anonymous Coward: "It looks you don't know the Intel protected mode architecture. The issue actually is any OS I know running on Intel - Linux included - doesn't use the protections offered fully." link

Protection that relies on zero bugs in application software is no protection at all. None of these exploits would be possible if Intel could design a reliable MMU.

"The Intel ® 64 architecture processors may contain design defects or errors known as errata. Current characterized errata are available on request."

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-Anti-virus..

With Friends like this, who needs Enemies or Anti-Virus...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the Symantec

security experts always trying to fool me into thinking Android was insecure???

OK then.... About time they got their of their own media medicine..

[RudderLessIT]

So, is this still a thing?

I followed the link to Google and the article includes some pretty damning comments, like "they were using code derived from open source libraries like libmspack and unrarsrc, but hadn’t updated them in at least 7 years"

But at the very end, there is a line "Thanks to Symantec Security Team for their help resolving these bugs quickly"!

So, besides a general dislike for Norton, should we still consider their products to be vulnerable?

[patrickstar]

Re: So, is this still a thing?

You can rest fully assured that there are tons of just-as-critical, but yet-not-disclosed-in-public, vulnerabilities in these products (or any other product exposed to untrusted data developed with a similar callous disregard for security)

[Charles 9]

Re: So, is this still a thing?

Callous disregard for security is pretty much the norm these days. Budgets and deadlines take priority because the investors hold the purse strings.