So - no one having a slow down problem???

[damnyank]

I can't believe no one has posted (either that or I missed it) that their NSW/NAV 2003 was slow responding, their ZA firewalls were constantly asking permissions for NAV to access the internet and also that on most right clicks explorer was asking for permission to access the internet!

I chased it almost all day and it looks like Symanatec will be taking care of it in the not too distant future. It appears problem is being caused by a Verisign Certificate that expired yesterday!

It is pretty well documented here

 

[xsivforce]

Odd, I haven't noticed.

 

[Khayman]

Nope not here

 

[dave holbon]

I can't believe no one has posted (either that or I missed it) that their NSW/NAV 2003 was slow responding, their ZA firewalls were constantly asking permissions for NAV to access the internet and also that on most right clicks explorer was asking for permission to access the internet!

I chased it almost all day and it looks like Symanatec will be taking care of it in the not too distant future. It appears problem is being caused by a Verisign Certificate that expired yesterday!

It is pretty well documented here

I have form many years used Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Firewall. Recently however due to tracing a problem with CPU overheating I had cause to uninstall these products and install the Kaspersky equivalents (free download for one month) temporarily. Whilst the overheating problems were not totally solved as previously running SpyBot shoots the CPU temp straight to 73C from 52C in about three minutes, the surprising and indeed very worrying outcome of this temporary swap of anti-hacking/virus tool kits was that Kaspersky revealed 12 unwelcome guests in the form of three worms and nine viruses lurking on my computer. After removing these, the overheating CPU still overheats a bit when SpyBot is run but now the temperature only goes to 67C, three degrees below (there’s a song about that) where I’ve set the alarms to go off.

As luck would have it I recently shelled-out for another years updates to Symantec’s (2003 to 2004) above products but have to say that if this product allows this many unwelcome guests onto my machine which now by the way, boots twice as quickly and seems more responsive I am seriously considering buying this Kaspersky replacement. However the user interface is terrible, getting it to automatically “quarantine” a virus during a scan is seemingly near impossible, with the added confusion of seemingly endless configuration options all over the place. The scanners not as fast as Norton either taking 2 hours and 37 min to complete on a 120Gig drive which is half empty.

Surely ant-virus software combined with a firewall should protect you machine from known viruses and all the ones detected on my machine were. Sadly Symantec is now looking to me like a solution looking for a problem. This should be the other way round I suspect!

 

[Perris Calderon]

DAVID!!!!

glad you found your way back here(smiley face from quick reply)

 

[damnyank]

DAVID!!!!

glad you found your way back here(smiley face from quick reply)

I too am glad you found your way back - welcome! 😉

 

[dreamliner77]

welcome back, yippeee!!!

 

[XpGuy1]

Hey DY... I just noticed it.. i haven't been on my home system much this week but i was last night and just thought it was the internet being slow. the pop ups did raise an eyebrow but i didn't really try to investigate. Thanks for the update though.

 

[Clirion]

This can also relate to users having slowdowns in both Excel and Word. They check for expired certificates. I had one user that had a document that went from a 4 second load to a 2 minute load. Disabling the Certificate Revokation in IE and disabline the autocheck in NAV brought the speed back up to 4 seconds.

 

[Drew]

Dave

Did I read your post correctly. Are you saying that you had a variety of problems in situ that Norton had allowed to get there and wasn't picking up on once they were there?

 

[Enyo]

Yes it appears that was what he was saying.

It is not uncommon for KAV to detect things NAV does not, this should not be surprising.

Also scan speeds and the interface of KAV represent that fact its not a normal retail product targeted at the average home user.

KAV contains a very advanced engine thats why your scan speed is slow and thats also why it detects much more than NAV can. The interface is not complex, in basic mode you select the drive and start the scanner, stay out of expert mode if you like things simple. The interface will be a bit simpler in version 5.

It is also ridiculous to assume that combo products offer more protection.

Finally with that level of infection with the type of things NAV misses and KAV detects i would say that you should focus on your computing habits and perhaps exercise a little more care.

 

[sboulema]

hmm no slowdowns here....

 

[dave holbon]

Yes it appears that was what he was saying.

It is not uncommon for KAV to detect things NAV does not, this should not be surprising.

Also scan speeds and the interface of KAV represent that fact its not a normal retail product targeted at the average home user.

KAV contains a very advanced engine thats why your scan speed is slow and thats also why it detects much more than NAV can. The interface is not complex, in basic mode you select the drive and start the scanner, stay out of expert mode if you like things simple. The interface will be a bit simpler in version 5.

It is also ridiculous to assume that combo products offer more protection.

Finally with that level of infection with the type of things NAV misses and KAV detects i would say that you should focus on your computing habits and perhaps exercise a little more care.

Life to me is simple. I purchase a virus detection programme to detect viruses. If it can’t for whatever reason I throw it in the bin, it’s that simple, well nearly. Likewise firewalls, hardware or software. If they allow known threats to pass into or out of your system they are worthless. Might as well install a crucifix on the top of the computer and pray. The computer I am typing this note on is used by five different people every day, where they go online is their business. That’s the reason I installed the software in the first place.

What I suspect here is that Symantec (a big player in this market) has sat back on their laurels and not invested enough in R & D but relied instead on their past good reputation and promoting their product.

I don’t ask for the impossible like detecting unknown viruses and their related cousins (Trojan’s) but it must have been know to the above company that their product now contained many flaws allowing infections on machines utilising their product. They are the market leader but I suspect not for much longer.

To compound matters further I have today read a comparison of virus detection programmes in the UK computer magazine called “Computer Shopper”. Their findings appear on the face of it to support my experience as already outlined, indeed they have stated that the Symantec product has now been overtaken by a number of products. What annoys me the most is that it’s cost me two days work, the loss of a licence to use Symantec products for the rest of the year (as I now dare not re-install their product as it clearly does not work as advertised) and the cost of purchasing another product. It might well be the case that in a year or so time the same thing will happen again. Where are all the so called “independent” advisors or people that used to give advice in this and other areas?

🙂 🙂 🙂

 

[Enyo]

Signature based anti virus detection is never 100% accurate and wont detect everything, you should not expect it to. Its only part of a package of things you should have to keep yourself clean. The first one been a secure computing environment and training for anyone who uses your systems.

Symantec invest a huge amount in R&D especially by way of discovery and detection. SARC have one of the biggest operations to do this and provide detection fast in most cases. There is absolutely nothing wrong with NAV or SAV and they both detect a huge amount of threats. Currently that stands at 64841 items excluding generic detections and heuristics. In tests they detect 85-95% of target items.

It absolutely does work as advertised, you can however expect it to provide complete protection. No AV package can.

The product does not contain 'flaws' but does lack in some key areas, in particular the unpacking engine is quite weak (but improved in 2004) which is why some things may slip past. KAV has a excellent UPE only rivaled by the leader F-Secure which actually uses the KAV Engine aswell as two others. NAV also does not detect the same amount of RARs as KAV, KAV is the market leader in this area.

I'm in no way a NAV fan but your experience with the product does not represent the majority of users experiences. Yes they are the market leader, they do provide the best package for the average user and corporations. The 'big boy' players like KAV and F-Secure are ahead of Symantec in terms of detection, this is widely acknowledged and proven in testing. However the two products lack features corporate users require and are inappropriate for low spec systems and the average home user.

I would not read much into Computer Shopper tests, retail magazines don't put it through the kind of testing that gives a accurate indication of its performance. I have posted tests previously that are accurate and carried out by independent groups.

You can get plenty of advice in this area from many on line sources. To be honest this area is not really dealt with alot in the real world. Most companies are content to rely on market leaders products and need nothing more than that.

 

[ming]

The only slow down on Norton that I've heard about was NAV2004.

 

[dave holbon]

Signature based anti virus detection is never 100% accurate and wont detect everything, you should not expect it to. Its only part of a package of things you should have to keep yourself clean. The first one been a secure computing environment and training for anyone who uses your systems.

Symantec invest a huge amount in R&D especially by way of discovery and detection. SARC have one of the biggest operations to do this and provide detection fast in most cases. There is absolutely nothing wrong with NAV or SAV and they both detect a huge amount of threats. Currently that stands at 64841 items excluding generic detections and heuristics. In tests they detect 85-95% of target items.

It absolutely does work as advertised, you can however expect it to provide complete protection. No AV package can.

The product does not contain 'flaws' but does lack in some key areas, in particular the unpacking engine is quite weak (but improved in 2004) which is why some things may slip past. KAV has a excellent UPE only rivaled by the leader F-Secure which actually uses the KAV Engine aswell as two others. NAV also does not detect the same amount of RARs as KAV, KAV is the market leader in this area.

I'm in no way a NAV fan but your experience with the product does not represent the majority of users experiences. Yes they are the market leader, they do provide the best package for the average user and corporations. The 'big boy' players like KAV and F-Secure are ahead of Symantec in terms of detection, this is widely acknowledged and proven in testing. However the two products lack features corporate users require and are inappropriate for low spec systems and the average home user.

I would not read much into Computer Shopper tests, retail magazines don't put it through the kind of testing that gives a accurate indication of its performance. I have posted tests previously that are accurate and carried out by independent groups.

You can get plenty of advice in this area from many on line sources. To be honest this area is not really dealt with alot in the real world. Most companies are content to rely on market leaders products and need nothing more than that.

Maybe then it’s a related problem with “always on” connections as I can trace back the arrival of the offending items almost exactly to my change from a dial-up 56k connection to always on broadband. The cycling of my IP address now does not happen that often giving attackers more time.
Of course you are right in your post concerning perceptions of people and corporations using anti-virus software and firewalls, but I have to say that when the whatever bank of somewhere’s entire customer base is erased by such software maybe someone somewhere will do something. I’m not griping about Symantec but if someone can rip an entire development programme from my machine then I start wondering. Of course it was an old and outdate version which I had forgotten was still on the drive but never the less it was done (200Mb of data) without me even being aware, and the application itself deleted completely with no record in any log anywhere not even in the registry. This was no mean feat even for an expert.

I am not a security expert and have always held the view that if you want to protect something then don’t put it on a computer but this was the thinking years ago at the dawn of the internet age. Are we still living in the era where small groups of individuals can habitually “take” whatever they want from unsuspecting computer users at will? I suspect that this is the case as these people seem to always be three or four steps ahead of the game or five or six when it comes to corporate users.

My complaint is not that the suppliers of (antivirus/firewall) software are incompetent but that they are not changing fast enough to keep up-to-date with the latest or even the current known threats. It’s this that needs to change. Maybe it’s endemic to the workings of the Internet itself and its packet switching nodes that (in most cases) has no security whatsoever built into them (Cisco) as this would slow the entire system down. I believe that at the end of the day and to the benefit of the normal man/woman this must be solved as how quickly the internet has expanded it will contract as mistrust of the medium is propagated throughout the entire community.

Well that’s my current view based on experience.


🙂 🙂 🙂

 

[Enyo]

I am not a security expert and have always held the view that if you want to protect something then don’t put it on a computer but this was the thinking years ago at the dawn of the internet age. Are we still living in the era where small groups of individuals can habitually “take” whatever they want from unsuspecting computer users at will?

Only if your not taking the appropriate steps to protect your systems and your network. What is appropriate depends on your organisation and the value of your data. But its absolutely not the case if you do the right things.

My complaint is not that the suppliers of (antivirus/firewall) software are incompetent but that they are not changing fast enough to keep up-to-date with the latest or even the current known threats.

Well they do keep very up to date, some more than others. Again speaking about SARC they have a good track record on detecting new threats.

You can see whats added on daily basis on:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/defs.added.html

Firewall vendors don't need to update there products every week for it to still be functional, its always going to do what it should but of course as i have highlighted before new ways to pass by personal firewalls do need to be looked a by P/F vendors, but as the only people relying ONLY on a P/F should be home users its not so much of an issue.

There is a whole array of things that could have been done to prevent the theft of your data. It sounds like you were relying on too weak a security plan? Beef it up a little 🙂

 

[rushm001]

Well said Enyo!