hi, Declaring Antivirus Software Dead, Firm Turns to Minimizing Damage From Breaches Symantec Corp. SYMC +0.75% invented commercial antivirus software to protect computers from hackers a quarter-century ago. Now the company says such tactics are doomed to failure. Antivirus "is dead," says Brian Dye, Symantec's senior vice president for information security. "We don't think of antivirus as a moneymaker in any way." Antivirus products aim to prevent hackers from getting into a computer. But hackers often get in anyway these days. So Mr. Dye is leading a reinvention effort at Symantec that reflects a broader shift in the $70 billion a year cybersecurity industry. Rather than fighting to keep the bad guys out, new technologies from an array of companies assume hackers get in so aim to spot them and minimize the damage. WSJD is the Journal's home for tech news, analysis and product reviews. Alibaba's Ma Takes Center Stage Apple Win Won't Hurt Samsung Google, Microsoft, Apple to Tell You if the Government Requests Your Data Web Video Deals Target Teens Online Gamers Say No to Monthly Fees Network-equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc. JNPR -0.24% wants customers to place fake data inside their firewalls to distract hackers. Shape Security Inc., a Silicon Valley startup, assumes that hackers will steal passwords and credit-card numbers so seeks to make it difficult to use the pilfered information. FireEye Inc. FEYE -6.19% created technology that scans networks for malicious-looking computer code that made it past the first line of defense. FireEye recently paid $1 billion for Mandiant, a small firm led by former Air Force investigators who act like cyber-Ghostbusters after a data breach. Symantec seeks to join the fray this week. It is creating its own response team to help hacked businesses. Within six months, the Mountain View, Calif., company plans to sell intelligence briefings on specific threats so clients can learn not just that they are getting hacked, but why as well. Symantec also is developing technology to look for more-advanced malicious software inside a network that mimics offerings from its rivals. The company needs a turnaround. Revenue fell in each of the past two quarters, though profit rose because of cost cuts. The company, which reports earnings Thursday, forecast revenue of $1.62 billion to $1.66 billion for the quarter through March, down at least 5% from a year earlier. The company in March fired Chief Executive Steve Bennett, the second time in two years it had ousted a CEO. Mr. Dye, who has spent more than a decade with Symantec, says it was galling to watch other security companies surge ahead. "It's one thing to sit there and get frustrated," he says. "It's another thing to act on it, go get your act together and go play the game you should have been playing in the first place." Symantec pioneered computer security with its antivirus software in the late 1980s. The technology keeps hackers out by checking against a list of malicious code spotted on computers. Think of it as an immune system for machines. read more and source: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_...4579542140235850578-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNTEwNDUyWj wiki
Hmmm, they finally figured out combofix and hitman pro are used more than there antivirus software and more succesful! lol
Yep. This is what we've been saying forever... A/V programs are nearly useless. They only block things that have been exploited forever, at the expense of lowering your pc performance by quite a bit. When they first started coming with everyone's system back in the mcafee days, I started noticing how much of a huge difference in performance it was while enabled. Even with vast improvements in optimization, it still has to read every single piece of executable code and compare it to a database. There's literally no way you can do that without harming computer performance. When you take into account that most malware is distributed by some sort of injection method these days, bypassing most of the malware checking, it becomes even more pointless. If you want some good advice, either stay the hell away from fishy files or use a sandboxing program like sandboxie when running them. At least when sandboxed, a crypted malware exe will just ruin the sandbox system and not your main system.
Good security suites have all that - this is just PR... And it's silly: MacroHard is already in, yeah - but which "security firm" is doing anything against that?
I guess we'll never know, but I have to ask myself: "Had Symantec been #1 in sales, #1 in customers and #1 in profits, would this declaration have ever been made?"
Imagine just one firm saying "We have plugged in all the holes MS have built-in deliberately, without stopping you going to the net and doing what you need to do"... Oh, one can dream... at least...
Just loaded fresh XP onto an old P3 laptop with 512MB RAM. Without AV, it's almost as fast as the Core2 duo XP box at my work. It's actually pretty usable.
I find Malwarebytes to be quite useful. Also, I like that it does not eat resources like many real-time malware scanners do. :MJ
If this technology is no longer working, then they have to come up with better solutions. The security issues are still there, so better software should be developed which can help users safeguard their data.
On the last new laptop I bought , pre-installed McAfee went straight in the trash along with the all of the other Bloatware. But my decision had nothing to do with John McAfee's ( let's be polite here ) " unconventional " personal life - ..... so what does the man himself say about his product ? In 2012, when asked if he personally uses McAfee anti-virus he replied by saying "I take it off," and that "It's too annoying." -
McAfee actually didn't like the way that his AV was going with the "new" developers that were working on it. So he left or sold McAfee AV. He actually has a new security company now called D-Vasive. http://dvasive.com/ His "unconventional" personal life aside, he is a incredibly smart man and knows more about what is going on than most people.
Absolutely no doubt on that point ! When all said and done , he has to swim in the same murky waters as the other players in the AV game , and there's no shortage of sharks ! .... I won't mention any names . On a separate issue ( off-topic here ... sorry ) , I notice the reference to Slackware in your sig. It's just about the only major Linux "flavor" that I haven't tried yet . Any recommendations for a first distro ? Something light would be good ( I posted in the MDL Linux forum ) .... it doesn't need to come out of the box singing and dancing ....
Useful but not dead. Avast was pretty good till they started throwing all the junk into their free product.
Here are a couple of recent news stories about anti-virus companies that are very interesting. Google the story titles for links to the articles. "Security wares like Kaspersky AV can make you more vulnerable to attacks" - Sep 23, 2015 - by ars technica "AVG Antivirus Plans to Collect & Sell Your Personal Data to Advertisers" - Sep 19, 2015 - by The Hacker News
Actually, just recently in a Reddit AMA he essentially said that Antivirus is dead and that he does not use them anymore. To throw off the feds, he says he constantly switches between platforms Android, iOS and PC which he claims irritates them a lot and that he does not use a phone for more than a year. It's quite interesting. I suggest you search for it.
Antivirus software is a safety net for human stupidity. Even then it will not protect against anything the program and its definitions are writen for. Only way to really minimize is to restrict yourself (noscript and ublock(expert)), run non admin/sudo user, patch your software, use Linux based distro and education. So basically total AV security is dead, but it still applies since patches will not warn a user downloading common adware or cryptolocker.