Antivirus: January 2007 Archives
Windows Vista is available for purchase through retail channels beginning January 30th. Its times like this that make me wonder, "where is my serial number for Symantec 10.2?" To my knowledge, I haven't been sent a serial number by Symantec. As a result I don't think I can download SAV 10.2 which is the version you need to use with Vista.
This is the Tao of Symantec. One serial number for 10.0, another for 10.1 and another for 10.2. God forbid you want to use the latest release and you're not a platinum customer. I've just about had it.
To deploy 10.2 clients, I'm going to have to upgrade my parent server first. It is not good SAV mojo to have the server be a lower version than any of the clients.
With the release of Vista, I think the pressure for us to provide SAV for Vista clients will grow. It started with the volume licensing release of Vista, and grew from there. I don't know how I'm going to find time to work with SAV 10.2 unless I come in on the weekend and do it. That assumes I'll have found a working serial number.
Miles to go before I sleep, Miles to go before I sleep.
My manager asked if we had any news on when Symantec IM Manager (formerly IMLogic) will support AIM 6 and Triton. Its been over two months since Symantec sent out a notice saying that AIM 6 will not work when IM Manager is used. Its been over four months since the customer advisory that AOL Triton 1.3 and 1.5 will not work.
When you invest in a vendor (such as Akonix, Facetime or Symantec) you are betting that they will continue to develop the product. There are always new client versions, and if the vendor doesn't move to support them, your users will be left in the IM stone age.
My call to support to ask about their progress in supporting these products did not begin well. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I spoke to the person who collects the info necessary to route the call. My call was answered by the technical guy who said "hello." What the hell is that? Who am I talking to? It sounds like I was routed to the janitors closet. Next he asks me for my case number. Shouldn't he already have that in front of him? So I ask my question, when will AIM 6 be supported by IM Manager? His response? "What's that." Well that instills confidence that this call will go well. So I tell him, that AIM 6 is not supported and does not work with current versions of IM Manager, I have checked the knowledge base and read the article on what is supported already. What I want to know is are they working on it, and what is the timetable. His response? He tries to read the KB article about supported clients to me.
I then tried to call Symantec customer service both to comment on this idiot and to try to get the answer. Unfortunately customer service has a hold time of 45 minutes thanks to the "new" licensing process. The licensing process is not new, I fought with that abomination in November and December.
Symantec has done as I predicted. They have bought and ruined yet another good product.
F-Secure has a blog entry on the latest virus varients from the stormwatch virus.
Subject:So Unique
Feeling Horny?
Full Heart
Sending Kiss
Just You
Heart of Mine
I Love You Soo Much
[events]Our Wedding Day
Love at first sight
Dream Date Coupon
Back Together
Attachment: flash postcard.exe
postcard.exe
greeting postcard.exe
Greeting Card.exe
Those are just some of the ones I have seen.
I'm seeing some interesting things in email this weekend. The first is some email detected as "Exploit/Mime-boundary-quote". MIME boundary issues may be exploited so that a SMTP gateway email scanner will not detect a virus, but Outlook will be able to interpret the MIME as an attachment. Well, its not getting by our scanner.
The second thing I'm seeing is more Stration virus variants being spammed out. As you'll recall, Stration is most often characterized as having an attachment named postcard.exe. I'm also seeing an attachment message.dat.cmd. At the time we received the new Stration it was detected heuristically. The signatures weren't yet available.
