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Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#71

Post by jerf »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #61
slg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.

A computer that is compromised with viruses is easily remedied. Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system. I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out. Furthermore, viruses do not affect the underlying hardware, which is what people would be throwing away. The economics do…

"Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system."

A careful examination of who that "anyone" is will reveal that as "anyone"s go, it's not very "anyone". It's certainly less than 50% comfortable doing that, and even less willing (e.g., I know how but that doesn't mean I want to).

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#72

Post by FastEatSlow »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #61
slg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.

A computer that is compromised with viruses is easily remedied. Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system. I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out. Furthermore, viruses do not affect the underlying hardware, which is what people would be throwing away. The economics do…

I think that in the days before good windows security, it's true that more people threw out their assets due to malware. I've seen plenty of family members do it, reinstalling an operating system is sadly not something "anyone" can do. It doesn't make sense to throw hardware out because of some software, but most don't have such a distinction.

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#73

Post by munk-a »

_jal wrote: post #21
feupan wrote: post #5

I’m sorry but this is the funniest thing ever. Wasn’t it just a few years ago we were joking that AV software is the virus? How far have we come.

Perhaps for their next trick they can improve the customer experience in a related niche with bundled ransomware.

They'll harvest AV computer resources for DDOS attacks and give a portion of the proceeds from selling that service on the dark web to customers. It's clearly a win/win!

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#74

Post by tempodox »

feupan wrote: post #5

I’m sorry but this is the funniest thing ever. Wasn’t it just a few years ago we were joking that AV software is the virus? How far have we come.

It's optimization. This malware installs more malware and lets the provider profit while the victim pays the electricity bills.

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#75

Post by teakettle42 »

djur wrote: post #63
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A computer that is compromised with viruses is easily remedied. Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system. I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out. Furthermore, viruses do not affect the underlying hardware, which is what people would be throwing away. The economics do…

Because they don't understand any of what you just said, and they think that malware can harm their computer.

> … and they think that malware can harm their computer.

To be fair, it actually can — there’s plenty of writable flash on motherboards and in peripherals where malware could persist across OS reinstallation.

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#76

Post by [deleted] »

slg wrote: post #31
hules wrote: post #8

I wonder if anybody has estimations of the contribution of anti-virus software to global warming. They run on almost all desktop computers, are generally large and bloated applications that consume tons of cpu for their continuous scans, I would not be too surprised if was far from negligible.

To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.

[deleted]

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#78

Post by munk-a »

jdavis703 wrote: post #55
protoman3000 wrote: post #43

Why is AV software still a thing? I’ve run my systems for 10 years without AV and never had any issue.

Because there’s lot of users who do naïve things with their computers. People visit sketchy sites, fall behind on updates and download sketchy files. Not everyone has 1) configured their system properly and 2) has the knowledge to avoid dangerous cyber situations.

Modern operating systems (windows has done this particularly dramatically) have made a lot of efforts to incorporate most of the obvious wins of AV software directly into the OS. I think the only real thing of value is occasionally running system-wide scans - but serious infections are getting better at hiding themselves so you'll probably only find the cheaply written ad-spyware that way.

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#79

Post by mayank »

An interesting aspect that I've seen missing from discussions on this is the dark growth pattern at play here.

All across the world, there are millions of languishing enterprise/educational fleets (generally Windows) administered by a single or a few "IT folks". In my experience, these people are often the only technologically aware people in the organization. This is Norton cutting them in on the grift. Install acclaimed "Norton Antivirus", which is likely already a line item on procurements, mine crypto on the sly for yourself on idle fleets at night, and give Norton a slice of the pie while you're at it.

Nobody's likely going to look twice at Norton running on a machine, we've already collectively conditioned ourselves to think of antivirus software as "slowing the machine down", and as a bonus: unless the next person in is as up to speed as your are, your grift can keep running long after you've moved on.

Re: Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer

#80

Post by smorgusofborg »

slg wrote: post #31
hules wrote: post #8

I wonder if anybody has estimations of the contribution of anti-virus software to global warming. They run on almost all desktop computers, are generally large and bloated applications that consume tons of cpu for their continuous scans, I would not be too surprised if was far from negligible.

To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.

I think this is an example of the 3rd party crapware that is more frequent a reason for a user to needlessly replace hardware that would have functioned correctly, quickly and more securely with a vanilla install, but a vendor accepted payment to market some security theatre or other feature that is hard to remove. Of course the vendor is all to happy if you think you need a new computer.
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