AT&T Tech Support 360
- Related Stories
-
Symantec unleashes Norton 360
February 26, 2007 -
Microsoft flags Gmail as a virus
November 13, 2006 -
Symantec atones for church spyware mistake
August 4, 2006 -
McAfee update exterminates Excel
March 10, 2006
Starting sometime on Tuesday, accessing the beta version of Yahoo Mail on a PC with Symantec's updated antivirus software caused alarm bells to go off. The security software reported finding the "Feebs" worm on the Yahoo Web pages.
That warning was in error, Symantec said Wednesday.
"Symantec antivirus products...triggered a false-positive alert with Yahoo Mail beta," Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec Security Response, said in an e-mailed statement.
Symantec started receiving reports of the incorrect warnings Tuesday evening, after it had sent out the latest antivirus definitions for its products. Symantec issued updated definitions later in the evening to fix the mistake, Weafer said.
"Given the timeliness of the response and the limited number of products which would have used those (incorrect) definitions, we expect the impact of this to be very limited," Weafer said, adding that Symantec received about a dozen reports from people who saw the false warning.
While Symantec downplayed the issue, the SANS Internet Storm Center reported that multiple people have seen the Symantec warning appear on their PC. One CNET News.com reader in an alarmed e-mail wrote that Yahoo Mail appeared to be hacked.
Such errors happen occasionally with security software. For example, Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare in November warned that Google's Gmail contained a virus. Earlier last year, McAfee's security tools flagged Excel and other legitimate applications as viruses, and Symantec last summer identified a Church of England software program as spyware.
Typically, these errors can be fixed by updating the signature files in security applications. These signatures are the rules used by the security program to identify malicious software.
See more CNET content tagged:
Symantec Corp.,
Yahoo! Mail,
Yahoo! Inc.,
antivirus software,
virus
because the Internet (capital I, a registered trade Mark) is a cooperative, abuse of any member harms us all.
despite a warning from Symantec that says it is."
It seems to me that if there is such a thing as a computer virus, it
would have to affect more than just systems that are using
Microsoft software!
politics aside, at least it gets flagged and left on the inbox screen. Stuff dumped in the spam box can remain undiscovered untill my boredom level makes me read it.
false positive reading:)
Robert
Surely, there are those IT buyers who must justify their over-inflated salaries and bloated budgets, so spending 100,000s of dollars on crap equipment and software plus their minions must attend to is a fair trade-off. Does all the automation really make them safer and compliant? If you ask me the jury is still out. Anybody heard when we'll all be able to stop worrying about network security? Shhhhh. Don't tell the Symantec stockholders: it's a joke.
Sponsored Links
Worm Attacks Yahoo E-Mail
Protect your PC with Norton
AntiVirus software. Download now!
www.symantec.com
Symantec should be apologizing for their error, not profiting from it. My opinion as a result of this is that Symantec no different than any other malware out there.
Sponsored Links
Worm Attacks Yahoo E-Mail
Protect your PC with Norton
AntiVirus software. Download now!
www.symantec.com
Symantec should be apologizing for their error, not profiting from it. My opinion as a result of this is that Symantec no different than any other malware out there.