Antivirus company Symantec | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Symantec product PGP Whole Disk Encryption which is used to encrypt all the contents on the disk on a block-by-block basis having Zero-Day Vulnerability, according to a pastebin note . Note was posted on 25th Dec by Nikita Tarakanov , claiming that  pgpwded.sys kernel driver distributed with Symantec PGP Desktop contains an arbitrary memory overwrite vulnerability. Affected version of software is Symantec PGP Desktop 10.2.0 Build 2599 (up-to date). Through a blog post , Symantec confirmed that its a potential issue, but it cannot easily be exploited. Vulnerability is limited to systems running Windows XP and Windows 2003 only. An attacker would need local access to a vulnerable computer to exploit this vulnerability. Note posted by Nikita also provide technical details on the issue, that help Symantec encryption engineering team to understand the issue. " However, the exploit would be very difficult to trigger as it relies on the system entering an error condition f

Cyber criminals become hyper active during festivals. Diwali is no exception. Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President and Managing Director (India Product Operations) of Internet security solutions company Symantec has observed that malware authors and spammers are using Diwali (The festival of lights that's celebrated across the world (primarily in the Indian sub-continent) as the latest event to lure unsuspecting users into downloading malware, buying products, and falling for scams. Shantanu said cyber criminals attempt to 'poison' web search engine results to take advantage of huge rush in search activity during popular events. " We have observed that cyber attackers are using various techniques to make the most of Diwali, " he warned. Cyber-attackers make use of social engineering tactics to lure users to purchase from or register on unknown websites. Users may be exposing personal information to Internet scammers. " Before giving into the temptation of clicking on a link in

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Recently we reported about that  Symantec provide overview and analysis of the year in global threat activity via its Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) , with a exclusive details that 400 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, which is an average of 33 million new variants of malware a month, or an average of one million new variants a day. In order to develop malware that evades detection by the security companies malware writers come up with some clever, yet quite simple techniques. If malware stops itself when it detects that it is running in a virtual environment, it may trick an automated threat analysis system into thinking that it is a clean program. So malware may not only fool automated threat analysis systems, but also a corporate system administrator who is searching for computers compromised by malware. Malware authors have recently attempted to use other approaches to fool automated threat analysis systems as well. Latest example of such Trojan is t

Japanese police had arrested three people, accused them of making death threats via email and discussion forums. However, later Researchers at Symantec have determined that a piece of malware was making death and bomb threats online on behalf of its victims infected. Symantec  confirmed that the malware " Backdoor.Rabasheeta " is capable of controlling a compromised computer from a remote location and the creator has the capability to command the malware to make the threats like bomb and murders. The most curious thing about this particular dropper is that it comes with a graphical user interface (GUI). The dropper for Backdoor.Rabasheeta drops a main module and a configuration file. The dropper creates a registry entry so that the main module is executed whenever the compromised computer starts. This dropper also modifies CreationTime, LastWriteTime, and LastAccessTime of the main module with random values to help keep it hidden. Then the dropper will execute the main mod

Symantec provide overview and analysis of the year in global threat activity via its Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) , with a exclusive details that 400 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, which is an average of 33 million new variants of malware a month, or an average of one million new variants a day. The report is based on data from the Global Intelligence Network, which Symantec's analysts use to identify, analyze, and provide commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam. Here are some highlights from the threat landscape of 2011. " It is impossible to manually analyze such a large number of sample files, so it is therefore necessary to use an automated threat analysis system to analyze sample behavior and prioritize the files that virus definitions should be created for ." Symantec said in a blog post. Political activism and hacking were two big themes in 2011 themes that are continuing into 2012

The Internet has created many new global business opportunities for enterprises conducting online commerce. However, the many security risks associated with conducting e-commerce have resulted in security becoming a major factor for online success or failure. Whether you are an individual or a company, you should approach online security in the same way that you would approach physical security for your home or business. Not only does it make you feel safer but it also protects people who visit your home, place of business, or website. It is important to understand the potential risks and then make sure you are fully protected against them. In the fast-paced world of technology, it is not always easy to stay abreast of the latest advancements. For this reason it is wise to partner with a reputable Internet security company. Here we have a very cool guide from  Symantec , This guide will de-mystify the technology involved and give you the information you need to make the

Antivirus company Symantec has detected a malicious campaign in which hackers managed to deceive thousands of people allegedly signed by a paid proxy service. They expose that hundreds of thousands of users signing up for a cheap and supposedly legitimate proxy service have ended up downloading malware and being ensnared into a botnet. Three months ago, Symantec researchers started an investigation into a piece of malware called Backdoor.Proxybox that has been known since 2010, but has shown increasing activity recently. " The malware is Backdoor.Proxybox, and our investigation has revealed an entire black hat operation, giving us interesting information on the operation and size of this botnet, and leading us to information that may identify the actual malware author ," Symantec. The service - ProxyBox - supposedly provides access to its entire list of thousands of proxies for only $40 a month, which is obviously too cheap a price for the provider to break eve