symantec

The Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous claims to have hacked into the DNS servers of Symantec, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and several other large organizations over the past few days.

Posting the news and records of its exploits on Pastebin, the group is taking credit for launching "DNS Cache Snoop Poisoning" attacks against its victims.

DNS cache snooping is the process whereby hackers can query a DNS server to find out which domain names are being resolved into IP addresses.

DNS cache poisoning is a method through which hackers are able to insert malicious and fake records into the … Read more

With around two months left before they debut, the beta versions of Norton Internet Security 2012 (download) and Norton AntiVirus 2012 (download) provide a solid glimpse of how Symantec wants to protect you in the coming year, including significant updates to its detection engines. See what else is new in this First Look video.

Most interesting of these under-the-hood improvements is the ability to scan downloads not just for viruses and malware, but also to determine if the file will adversely affect your computer's stability. Other new features include long-awaited Google Chrome support, online backup, and an Android app … Read more

Microsoft patents spy tech for Skype which allow users to listen in on private Skype conversations. This does not sound good as our privacy on the internet becomes less and less private. Google's social media site Google Plus begins with little fan fair hoping to cause a mass migration from Facebook. And a clever Foursquare hack turns New York City Into a giant game of Risk!

Symantec announced today that it has agreed to acquire privately held Clearwell Systems for $390 million, bolstering the security company's efforts in the growing market for electronic legal-document discovery.

Symantec, best known for its Norton security products for PCs, will combine Clearwell's analysis and archiving of legal documents with its own Enterprise Vault e-discovery software. The e-discovery software market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 14 percent and is estimated to reach $1.7 billion by 2014, according to Gartner industry research.

"As information continues to grow at unprecedented rates, the biggest challenge for … Read more

New Norton betas include the ability to rate a download's stability based on the file behavior on the computers of other Norton users and full Google Chrome support, setting the tone for the premium security suite updates due later this year.

Released today by Symantec, Norton Internet Security 2012 beta (download) and Norton AntiVirus 2012 beta (download) also include a new start-up manager that debuted earlier this year in Norton 360, changes to Symantec's SONAR technology, and a new autofix feature for curing installation woes quickly.

The changes are not ground-breaking, but do appear to be able to … Read more

The successful takedown of the Rustock botnet cut the volume of spam across the world by one-third, according to Symantec's March 2011 MessageLabs Intelligence Report.

By the end of last year, the notorious botnet was responsible for sending out 44 billion spam messages per day, or more than 47 percent of the world's total output, making it the leading purveyor of spam. Though Rustock lost some steam this year, it still managed to send out more than 13 billion daily spam e-mails earlier this month prior to its takedown, said Symantec.

But legal actions by Microsoft and raids … Read more

Suspicious code is lurking in a repackaged Chinese version of a tool Google released last weekend to remotely clean malicious apps off Android phones, Symantec said today.

This "trojanized" package was found on an unregulated third-party Chinese marketplace and not on the official Android Market, Symantec said in a blog post.

After 58 malicious apps were found on the Android Market last week and downloaded onto about 260,000 devices, Google removed the apps from the market and then wiped them from the phones too.

Now, Symantec says someone appears to have taken the "Android Market Security … Read more

Legitimate Android apps are being compromised by phony versions that masquerade as the real thing but deliver a payload of malware, according to a Symantec blog published yesterday.

Found on unregulated third-party Android markets, malicious versions of legitimate apps like Steamy Window are difficult to distinguish except for their tendency to request permissions that are more excessive than usual, says Symantec. But once installed, these apps carry a new piece of Android malware dubbed Android.Pjapps.

Even running the app doesn't raise a red flag to the user as the fakes closely look and act like the legitimate versions. … Read more

A new free tool from the makers of Norton attempts to quantify the real-time state of cybersecurity. It makes its debut today alongside the latest version of Symantec's all-in-one consumer security suite, Norton 360.

The Norton CyberCrime Index lies somewhere between a weather report and the United States' threat level advisory system, and Norton 360 version 5 launches with a direct link to it.

The CyberCrime Index uses a statistical model based on information from Symantec's Global Intelligence Network, ID Analytics, and DataLossDB. At the top level, the CyberCrime Index takes this data and creates a number evaluating … Read more