Norton – Paul's Tech Talk

Why Norton users do it wrong with Passwords

PaulMay 16, 2009

I just read this blog post Phishing attacks on Facebook users point to efforts to mine login data for profit. After reading one of the suggestions on how to create a good password and I’ll quote:
< [ad]blockquote>1. Use complex passwords and unique ones for each site. My method? Pick one string of letters and numbers and then add the first letter from the website’s name. For example: if my password “string” were “abc123$” then my Facebook password would be “Fabc123$”.
Now I can see where this can be used to figure the password? If people use this method they would still be able to figure it out over time. Let’s say you use the same sequence of numbers and letters after each site you go to. This would make it much easier for a hacker to figure out the other passwords.

I will keep saying this time and time again, remembering passwords for me is the past. I’ve been using [intlink id=”2646″ type=”post”]Roboform[/intlink] for the past few months and haven’t had any problems. I’ve also have them backed up to Mozy to help protect my passwords. As long as you back them up with Mozy and Keep save a copy of it off your hard drive you will be much safer than trying to remember a good password.

If you would like to find ways to help backup your passwords or your valuable information please [intlink id=”3171″ type=”post”]check this out[/intlink].

Remember your Roboform passwords are stored at :

C:\Users\(your username)\Documents\My RoboForm Data\Default Profile (Windows Vista and Windows 7).

C:\documents and settings\(your username)\My Documents\My RoboForm Data\Default Profile (Windows XP).

Although Norton’s suggestions does help keep your a little more safer this can be easily used to brute force attacks because they probably have tried letters from the website just because they do think about these things. You should always have a really good password and [intlink id=”2646″ type=”post”]Roboform[/intlink] can do that for you and keep it safe.

Thinking back to PIFTS.EXE.

PaulMarch 11, 2009

Thinking to this very incident looks to something out of the movie “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events“. I won’t go into much detail but here is what I want answers to about the PIFTS.EXE. You see after I have read a great article talking in detail about this, I have also come to the conclusion something isn’t right.

[ad#cricket-right-ez]The blog owner known as Anshar in the forums on the Symantec points out some key events. He wanted to point out that the users who were posting were not violating the TOS and was posting questions that look to asking about this file. See screen capture of what I took. This one picture doesn’t prove his theory in whole, but does bring up some suspicions. This actually might be them trying to find a ‘scapegoat’ so to speak. He also talks about what others are asking? What is PIFTS.EXE? People seem to still have not be answered that question.

Although, in Norton’s defense there seems to be a lot of information that they have to sort through. I’ll admit this information people are asking should be really simple to find in the Symantec Databases somewhere. I will not say they are hiding anything major but I do think something is going on that we are not aware of. Here’s some other thoughts to considers? If Norton needed to find out who was using Windows 7, couldn’t they of asked or even made a simple site redirect to find that information, after all anytime you visit a site you have that information sent to the stats. I could in theory find out how many visitors are visiting from Macs and how many are on older systems. That would be very easy to do with Google Analytics.

Now with that said let’s talk about Why it took almost a whole day for them to release a public statement about what happened. I might be wrong but if I was a stockholder, I’d of demanded them to send that out ASAP instead of waiting 20 to 24 hours. Although I’m not trying to make any more conspiracy theories, I do think the Streisand effect came into effect and people are feeling like Norton did something they shouldn’t have. In which case, Norton probably made “A fail whale” attempt of making it better when they started to delete the post.

I’ve been watching the Norton forums trying to make sense of all this, and I do know that Norton have lost people’s faith in them and people are removing their product off there systems if Norton doesn’t start answering questions that need to be answered.

Norton has released the information of PIFTS.EXE and what it does. Although I am sure people are going to argue about what it does or doesn’t. I wanted to post this for people to check out and consider for yourself.

Let’s Clear this up — PIFTS.EXE

PaulMarch 10, 20096 Replies

I just wanted to clear up some things about PIFTS.EXE. I read a Most Interesting Article about this over at Bleeping Computers. He talks about how tested this on his system and I’ll quote:

After reading about this file here and here, I asked around on BleepingComputer.com for one of our users to submit a sample of the file to me. Once I received the file, I ran it on a test box while running a file monitor, to see what it accesses, and Wireshark, to see what it does on the network. What I found was that the program appears to be quite innocent, and from the hostname it connects to, we could have guessed as to what it does. It appears that when you update Norton it connects to stats.norton.com and lets the server know someone has installed an update, what the update was, what program it was for, and whether it was successful. Now, I am not saying that Norton should be contacting one of their servers and reporting this type of information without a user’s permission or even knowledge, but there is no conspiracy theory between Norton, Google, Microsoft, African Nations, and little green men.

[Via Bleeping Computers]

[ad#cricket-right-ez]So Let’s Talk about this a little more, It does connect to stats.norton.com and tell norton that it it has installed the update. Like he says, I agree although Notron isn’t trying to be the bad guy. I, like everyone else, also thought something was amiss when they started deleting forums post. Instead of locking them down. You see it makes them look suspicious and that started a flurry of people posting about this. I do know they should of been truthful from the get go. I just heard about this today and wanted to remind people that I meant what I said. Don’t go overboard because your think your trust with a company was mislead. You know that they have to protect their service to prevent unauthorized access to there software and get what money they deserve. However They should of been open from the start with this on there main page or in the forums talking about how this happened in the first place.

In Symantec’s defense, when I first heard about this earlier this morning, I noted privately to a couple of folks that some of the comments being left on the Symantec forum bore many of the hallmarks of “4Chan,” (a.k.a. “anonymous”), a virtual community that thrives on playing practical jokes and causing trouble online. The summary about this incident posted to News-for-nerds site Slashdot this morning links to a key 4Chan forum.

[Via Bleeping Computers]

Now they couldn’t say something like this either in there forums as a sticky note or on there Website? This was why they started to delete the forum threads without telling anyone what happened. I understand they have the right to delete what they want when they want, it was probably an over zealous moderator. I wanted to clear this up a little so the virus theories and the conspiracy theories would go away. I know some website are being over zealous over this and claiming it is doing things it isn’t. I was just trying to inform but others seemed to run with it and come up with all kinds of theories. So please let’s take a deep breathe and understand that you have several options as to what you want to do. I haven’t recommended people removing Norton, and I still don’t recommend removing from your system. I will always tell people that there is Free versions of Anti-virus and Firewalls available. Like I said in my previous post these were post made by people on the forums and I was taking screen shots to proof that there was something going on.

I hope this clarify what is going on with Norton Antivirus. I’ll still recommend it for people who can afford it, because it does a good job on anti-virus.

[READ More about this at Symantec]

Conspiracy theories run rampent due to PIFTS.EXE

PaulMarch 10, 20092 Replies

(Looks like some of this was a 4chan gag, check my other post about it)

All of the sudden people around the World are seeing PIFTS.EXE popping up. Norton Antivirus is asking users if they want to accept it. Here what I do know:

Here’s some information I pulled from my Zone Alarm Logs. Does this make sense to anyone?
[ad#cricket-right-ez]2009/03/09 18:26:44 — New Program — PIFTS.exe — Destination IP: 67.134.208.160:80 — outgoing — blocked — Destination: ping.lifecycle.norton.com

2009/03/09 18:47:52 — Program Access — PIFTS.exe — Destination IP: — outgoing — blocked — Destination:

2009/03/09 18:48:28 — Changed Program — Windows Explorer — 207.46.248.249.80 — outgoing — blocked — Destination: sa.windows.com
[Via The Symatec Forums]

This indicates that the program tried to change tactics to go out on the net. I look a look for this and it is SwapDrive. So this must be an update to Swapdrive but I am unsure as to why it pops up that way. The other ip is in Africa or at least take the .80 out of the equation and it points to an Africa IP. (It looks to my mistake in that little part, “to error is human” Check out this post about it) Although just recently Norton Decides to Delete that thread and people are really worried about why? Is this a cover up of some sort because there is a exploit in the Wild that we don’t know about? These are good questions that need to be answered. Here is what one posted about this just after they deleted the forum thread:

As you can see people are taking this deletion on the community forum thread very seriously, they know something is not right in Denmark. I also want to point out this one:

I don’t know what Norton is up to but this is making me uneasy. If they are worried about something that they can’t explain or don’t want to explain then they have made a mistake. Some users are really worried now because Norton isn’t saying anything at all. I love this post:

As you can see people see this and are worried, I didn’t want these to be taken offline like the first post so I make physical copies to put on my blog. I want to prove to people that these actually existed. I would advise people to run Hijackthis to see if you can figure out where this is coming from. I don’t know why they would hide the truth, it will bite them in the end. Anyone want to comment on this, I am quiet curious??

*UPDATE 12:01 am 03/10/09*

Seems Norton Deleted all post about PIFTS.EXe so I don’t know what happened but This will have to come out in the open sooner or later. I just hope it isn’t going to be to late.

Update 12:15am 03/10/09*

Seems people have decided to go to the Zonealarm forums to discuss this:

You can visit there forums here. I am getting more curious about this little situation and now tempted to stay up all night watching this!!

[ad#digg-right]I also found this forum thread from BuckeyePlanet. I am seeing more and more people blogging about this. So this must be something REALLY big. Keep sending me comments if you find anything else. Don’t forget to add me on Twitter.

This looks interesting:
[ad#cricket-1]

Even more interestingly now, after posting a single post asking about PIFTS.exe, which was deleted, and a subsequent post to another forum asking about the deleted posts, which got deleted, I’ve now been blocked from creating new posts or replies on the Norton forums. They really don’t want to talk about whatever this was.

And doubly interesting — or perhaps not, who knows — not sure if this is standard practice at Symantic or what, but opening the PIFTS.exe in a hex editor shows a large section of the end of the file consists only of “PADDINGXX” repeated over and over. I’ve got some background in programming and can’t think of a good reason why you would need padding like that on a legitimate executable. However, if an executable in an update has been compromised it may require padding such as that to match the original executable’s file size or something. But that’s just pointless conspiracy theorizing that likely has no basis. It would be nice though to hear from Norton about what the **bleep** this thing is.
[Via Zonealarm Forum]

I don’t know but I suspecting an update went wrong at least from all the indications I’m seeing.

I will say you have several options available to you:

You could get a Free Anti-virus Software

You could run without An Anti-virus (Not a great option, wouldn’t suggest it)

You could do nothing and wait. (My recommendation until I find out the the full story!!)

Please let’s not start a pandemic over this, I am however worried because Norton has yet to release any public information about this? I will update as needed but please people let’s not go to OVERBOARD on this!!

Google Get’s rid of the Trend “PIFTS.EXE, no long there. It was there last night. Hmm even more questions and answers? (Click image to view it!!)

On a side note, I do not have a
ccess to this file. I’ve had a friend who told me about this and I started to investigate it and as soon as I did that Norton started to kill the messages. That when I knew it was something big. That is why I blogged about it. I do not have the program. I just know that it is being searched really hard because I’ve had more people coming to my site than usual. So please don’t ask about samples, you can comment on this or ask questions. I provide this for the community to let them know!!

(Looks like some of this was a 4chan gag, check my other post about it)