The most recent articles from What PC?

Security software head-to-head

Kyle MacRae — 2002-01-30T15:01:16.000Z

Kyle MacRae, What PC?, Wednesday 30 January 2002 at 15:01:16

Norton Internet Security 2002 & McAfee Internet Security 4 slug it out in the antivirus arena.

You don't need us to tell you about the perils of internet-borne viruses and kudos-seeking hackers, but you do need protection. Here, then, are two comprehensive packages slugging it out in the security stakes. Unsurprisingly, the similarities between them vastly outweigh the differences.

Central to both are antivirus and firewall programs. Norton's AntiVirus and McAfee's VirusScan both scan for bugs in the background or on demand, kill infections and repair or quarantine suspicious files, include a year's free updates and are perfectly deserving of a home on any computer.

Points of difference? AntiVirus scans email on the way out as well as in, which is reassuring for your contacts as it reduces the danger of passing on an infection unawares; and VirusScan employs a feature called HAWK (that's Hostile Activity Watch Kernel, would you believe) which throws a wobbly if you - or more likely a Sircam-style virus - send the same message to lots of your contacts simultaneously.

Norton's version is easier to configure but, in a bizarre and frustrating hiccup, it mis-identified our installed copy of Microsoft's Encarta Dictionary as a virus and shoved the executable file straight into quarantine.

Firewalls generally take a bit of training and these two are no exception: each time a program tries to access the internet, up pops an alert message with the option to grant or deny it permission to do so once or forever. Thus your browser, email and instant messenger programs probably warrant online carte blanche, whereas creepy 'spyware' programs deserve to be stopped in their tracks.

The flipside to firewalls is their ability to mask your computer's presence on the internet in order to render it invisible to would-be hackers, and both programs worked just fine in our tests. Overall, we found McAfee's version the more intuitive, less fiddly firewall.

Privacy controls

So much for the important stuff. Elsewhere, both mini-suites attempt to woo your wallet with privacy controls, where attempts to send your name, address, phone number, credit card details or shoe size across the internet are supposedly blocked at source. We will remark only that such measures are ridiculously easy to circumvent, by accident or design.

Norton also includes parental controls in an attempt to censor surfing. Of this approach, we will say more: it really is high time that the notion of 'safe' and 'bad' URLs is knocked on the head. It's just a nonsense: the Page Three section of the Sun newspaper's website is blocked, for instance, but not so Richard Littlejohn; and even the most pornographic sites can be seen in all their glory simply by using search engine Google's cache.

At best, parental controls make kids look that little bit harder for forbidden fruit; at worst, it gives mums and dads an entirely false sense of security.

True to form, McAfee throws a few wholly unrelated extras into the melting pot, notably Shredder, which permanently deletes sensitive files, and Safe & Sound, a useful real-time backup utility. Both packages also block website banner ads, a feature for which dial-up users should be grateful.

Bottom line? Norton has the clear edge in design and overall ease of use. If you were designing an integrated internet security suite from scratch, it would look and feel a lot more like this than McAfee's version. Then again, McAfee's extra features could just tip the balance, and we found it less of a drain on system resources. Not surprisingly, they both cost the same.

If you already have an antivirus program that you're happy with, then think seriously before splashing out on either of these products. A firewall is a sound idea but Windows XP has one built in and the excellent ZoneAlarm (from www.zonelabs.com) is still free for personal use.

Specifications

Antivirus protection; firewall, privacy controls and blocking; free updates for one year.

Mcafee only: file shredder; encrypts key files; backup utility.

Norton only: parental controls.

Price

£49.99 (both products) inc VAT

Contacts

Network Associates (McAfee): 0800 092 7160 www.mcafee-at-home.com

Symantec (Norton): 020 7616 5600 www.symantec.com

www.zonelabs.com

Overall

McAfee Internet Security 4: **** Norton Internet Security 2002: *****

New virus attacks PDFs

What PC? staff — 2001-09-24T23:00:00.000Z

What PC? staff, What PC?, Monday 24 September 2001 at 23:00:00

Fears are mounting over the possibility that Adobe's popular PDF format could be the next stop for virus writers follwing the discovery of Peachy, a Visual Basic script that can be embedded into a PDF document.

Fortunately, it will not affect users simply opening or viewing PDF files in Acrobat Reader. Because of the way attachment files are implemented in PDF format, a user would have to open the infected document in Acrobat, the software used to create PDFs.

If the file is opened in Acrobat, the virus is activated and will email itself in PDF format to all addresses found in the user's Outlook Address book. What else it does is unclear at the time of writing.

Because Peachy has a limited mechanism for infection, it has only been tagged as low risk by antivirus firms.

However, the emergence of the virus has drummed up some concern that the PDF format itself could become a new vessel for infection especially if, at some point in the future, Adobe added attachment handling functionality to its Acrobat Reader software.

Virus busters send hackers packing

What PC? staff — 2001-05-16T23:00:00.000Z

What PC? staff, What PC?, Wednesday 16 May 2001 at 23:00:00

Symantec releases personal firewall and security system

Symantec has released Norton Internet Security 2001 Version 3.0, a personal firewall and security system.

The suite contains Norton Personal Firewall for maximum defence against hackers. This features Intrusion Protection, which detects port scans and Trojan horse access attempts, then blocks access while alerting the user.

In addition, the suite can put your computer into stealth mode, hiding it from hackers.

The acclaimed Norton AntiVirus, which guards your system against viruses, worms and many other types of harmful code floating around the internet, is also featured and contains new script-blocking technology.

Other parts of the package include Privacy Control to stop private data being sent online without the user's permission, and an Ad Blocking facility to delete all online banner advertising, resulting in quicker page download speeds.

The Family Edition also includes parental controls for limiting children's access to objectionable sites and costs £49.99. The normal edition costs £39.99 (both prices include VAT).

Symantec: 020 7616 5600

www.symantec.com/region/uk.

Shockwave virus hits Europe

What PC? staff — 2001-02-01T24:00:00.000Z

What PC? staff, What PC?, Thursday 1 February 2001 at 00:00:00

Pro Linux worm 'high risk', says antivirus firm

A new virus believed to have been spread by fans of the Linux operating system has hit several major European businesses.

Claiming to be an animation in the popular Shockwave format, the worm has been branded as a high risk by antivirus vendor Network Associates, and a medium risk by other vendors including Symantec, Kaspersky Labs, Trend Micro and Sophos.

Developed by a hacker going by the name of The Penguin, it arrives attached to an email with the subject line: "A great Shockwave Flash movie." Once the program is run, the virus emails itself to everyone in the user's Outlook address book.

The program copies itself to the root directory of the C: drive and to the Windows start-up folder. It then sends the message "Got yet another idiot" to a yahoo.com email address.

Finally, it searches local hard drives for files with .Zip and .JPG extensions, and moves them to the C: directory, adding "change at least now to Linux" to the file names. As far as it is known, the worm does not change the content of the files, just the file names.

Vendors have warned that there is likely to be an increase in the number of virus infections in the run-up to Christmas as authors try to capitalise on festive staff dropping their guard. Worms based on Christmas cards and Christmas carols have already been seen.