symantec

In the world of security, targeted attacks should be a real concern--and extremely worrisome--to organizations around the world, Symantec said in a new quarterly report on attacks on critical infrastructure.

"The customization of targeted attacks can make them more dangerous than non-targeted attacks because they are tailored explicitly to affect a target group," Symantec wrote in its quarterly report (PDF). The company said that targeted attacks are currently being used to take data from companies, steal information for financial gain, or to simply cause "mischief."

Targeted attacks have been gathering some notoriety over the past couple … Read more

Stuxnet may have hit different organizations, but its main target was still the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran, an expert who has analyzed the code said today.

Ralph Langner, who has been analyzing the code used in the complicated Stuxnet worm that used a Windows hole to target industrial control systems used in gas pipelines and power plants last year and possibly earlier, said the initial distribution of Stuxnet was limited to a few key installations.

"My bet is that one of the infected sites is Kalaye Electric," he wrote in an e-mail to CNET. "Again, … Read more

Intellectual Ventures, founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, filed three patent infringement lawsuits today against nine companies in the security, memory, and chip markets.

One lawsuit names as defendants Check Point Software Technologies, McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro and accuses them of infringing on four of its patents related to antivirus and Internet security, according to the lawsuit available for download here.

The second suit accuses Elpida Memory and Hynix Semiconductor, makers of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and Flash memory, of infringing between five and seven of its patents. And the final suit alleges that three … Read more

The Stuxnet worm is a "wake-up call" because of its complexity and its aim at critical infrastructure systems, a Symantec director told a U.S. congressional committee today.

The malware is a milestone in many ways, Dean Turner, director of Symantec Security Response's Global Intelligence Network, said in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

It is the first known threat to: spy on and reprogram industrial control systems and grant hackers control of critical infrastructures; use four zero-day vulnerabilities; compromise two digital certificates; inject code into industrial control systems and … Read more

Symantec researchers have figured out a key mystery to the Stuxnet worm code that strongly suggests it was designed to sabotage a uranium enrichment facility.

The program targets systems that have a frequency converter, which is a type of device that controls the speed of a motor, Eric Chien, technical director of Symantec Security Response, told CNET today. The malware looks for converters from either a company in Finland or Tehran, Iran.

"Stuxnet is watching these devices on the target system that is infected and checking what frequency these things are running at," looking for a range of … Read more

If you feel safer online using your PC instead of your mobile phone, you are not alone.

A majority 87 percent of people polled for a new study think their home PCs offer better defense against viruses, malware, and hackers than do their mobile phones. Released today by the National Cyber Security Alliance and Symantec, the study (PDF) also discovered that people may be overconfident in the power of their computers to protect them as less than half are using full security software.

Though only 24 percent of those polled said they feel very safe using their home computers to … Read more

Nearly half of those who work in critical infrastructure systems worldwide expect their company to be targeted by a computer attack over the next year, a new survey has found.

About one-third of the respondents say their company is "extremely" prepared to deal with it, according to the survey (PDF) released today by security company Symantec.

Another 36 percent to 41 percent (depending on the type of attack) say their company is "somewhat" prepared to deal with attacks that range from attempted theft and modification or destruction of data to shutting down computer networks and manipulating … Read more

Symantec says it has a new method for combatting malware, one that taps into a wider repository of information on potentially malicious code.

The security vendor today announced its new Ubiquity product, which combines data analyzed from the PCs of Symantec customers with Symantec's own Global Intelligence Network to combat new and mutating types of threats.

First featured in Symantec's Norton 2011 security product lineup and in its Hosted Endpoint Protection, Ubiquity is now gearing up for a rollout across a wider range of enterprise products in the coming year, starting with Symantec Web Gateway, the company said.… Read more

As people increasingly use their smartphones both for work and for pleasure, Symantec is now offering a range of tools designed to better protect mobile devices, no matter where or how they're used.

The security company today unveiled several updates to its mobile strategy to help companies, consumers, and carriers all better secure and manage smartphones, tablets, and other portable gadgets.

On the business front, companies face strong challenges in securing the mobile phones on their networks, especially as more employees try to use their own personal gadgets on the job. Many can't support the increasing array of … Read more