Past tense: John Thompson has openly mocked Microsoft’s security initiatives. His company is showing no fear, and I am sure there are a lot of folks snickering along with him. Microsoft is acting squirrelly. Then there’s the flying lawsuits and Mac endorsements.

I say the battle hasn’t gotten started just yet, but when it does it should be fun to watch.

***UPDATE***

If the combatant shows up with a lawn chair, goad them some more: Symantec says Vista could be less secure than XP.

It’s being called the “joint consumer internet security service”, but it sounds a lot like a distribution agreement to me. No matter.

Yahoo and Symantec will be co-branding Norton Internet Security tools, and offering them to Yahoo! subscribers at a pretty steep discount. The package will be wrapped around Yahoo! stuff like Mail, Toolbar, and Search.

Norton already updates subscriptions for a price, so I look at the provided discounts as a good thing. Cheaper protection for people less inclined to buy it on their own. The offering should also have a big impact on bug distribution, as Yahoo! has a ton of customers that may take them up on the offer. The more protected machines the better.

If you recently upgraded to Norton Anti-Virus 10 like I did, and wound up with multiple cron jobs running your update and scan events, like I did, and couldn’t get any help from Symantec, like I couldn’t, here is the solution…

Uninstall NAV. Delete all your plists related to Symantec. In fact delete any file that sounds like it is from them, period. Reboot. Reinstall. Reboot (required). I am running right now - you should be too.

I’ve picked on Symantec way too much, so I will keep it short. Researchers found a hole in Symantec’s anti-virus product suite that could allow complete control of a computer to be had.

See, I kept it short - it’ll get fixed soon (we hope).

UPDATE: Symantec gets kudos for plugging the hole in record time. Now if they could only help me with my problem.

Hot on the heals of the Symantec dissing (and then suing) of Microsoft over the whole idea of security in perpetually delayed upcoming Vista operating system, another security industry leader has announced they are not worried either.

David Moll, CEO of Webroot, says the security in Vista will be akin to “locking half the doors in your house.”

After reading about this guy Moll’s scrappy background, I’ll just bet Microsoft is in for a fight, and I suspect that fight won’t be in a courtroom.

Symantec has decided to sue Microsoft over intellectual property rights related to its Veritas acquisition, which may or may not have been included in the purchase (since MS claims they own them). Some of this technology is supposed to be included in Vista.

If there was any doubt over security companies moves, pending the release of the supposedly re-invigorated (security wise) operating system, well they should now be gone. No wonder John Thompson didn’t seem worried.

I don’t know what Microsoft’s next move will be, other than settle to avoid any more Vista delays. But I also wonder if Microsoft likes these lawsuits, as they just keep on buying security companies.

***UPDATE***

Almost forgot - John Thompson was touting Macs as well. Go figure.

***UPDATE2***

Take your time, lawyers. Vista Vista release might take a while. The latest beta has major problems.

Symantec has introduced a new branding campaign that sounds like the Norman Rockwell approach. “SafetyTown” focuses on, well, safety, but the community watch program there is all about the internet.

This community must be a getaway for designers and illustrators, because the mayor of the town is touting Macs.

This post is in no way meant to denigrate OS X as a great platform for engineers, accountants, or anyone else. I am using it for that kind of stuff, although my engineering feats are hardly anything be to bragging about.

It is not often I do much at Spamroll besides run my fat trap, but I know of at least two people on the planet that find my diatribes kind of amusing. So if I have garnered even the slightest good faith in the community, maybe someone can help me out.

See, I was reading this piece which says the cocky Mac users better watch out - their security is flying out the door. I am a Mac user, but not quite so cocky, and I have had a problem with Norton Anti-Virus which Symantec literally refuses to help me out with.

When I upgraded from version 9 to version 10, the software added extra LiveUpdate and full disk scan jobs, but failed to delete the previous ones. Two simultaneous jobs used to run, and when full scan was up to bat, it would grind the machine to a halt. So I went into Scheduled Tasks and shut off all the jobs. Now, LiveUpdate and full scan still run, from the mysterious cron job that was never overwritten or deleted in the first place.

Symantec and I exchanged a half-dozen emails over three weeks (they are not very quick to the punch - using “high number of requests” as their excuse). Finally they asked me to resubmit the ticket - yea, right.

If anyone knows where on an OS X machine Norton Anti-Virus (particularly v9) stores its scheduled tasks, please let me know. I’d love to get those strays deleted.

Regards,

The Management

That won’t be an excuse for not getting your work done this morning, if you follow the advice below…

If you do a lot of spreadsheet work and run McAfee security tools, please check for updates when you hit the desk this morning. A bad McAfee definition was identifying Excel as a virus late last week, but McAfee quickly fixed the problem. This is particularly important for those who leave the office for lunch on Fridays, and don’t come back.

It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft’s anti-spyware was beating up Norton, so McAfee might just be teaching Microsoft a lesson here, at the bequest of a neighbor. Now all we need is for Webroot to start flagging Word files, CA to close all ports on boxes running SQL Server, and TrendMicro to reroute all Outlook messages through Google’s Gmail, and we’ll have a really fun conspiracy here.

***UPDATE***

Looks like Google can’t participate in my “rage against the machine” scenario, as McAfee was eating the Google toolbar installer too.

Symantec’s new leader has his work cut out for him - the company has a lot of issues that need fixing! The latest is a relatively benign (but nonetheless spooky) security hole in its firewall softwares that can bop users off of IRC chat networks.

“Symantec said Wednesday it plans to tweak the behavior of its Norton Internet Security and Norton Personal Firewall products..”

This kind of thing should simply not be happening to a firm who is focused on security. I’d say they have a heck of a lot more than “tweaking” to do.