Subject: Norton SystemWorks [VULNERABILITY TO HACKERS]
"As long as you're on the SARC Web site getting your bugs checked, you
may as well check your vulnerability to other dangers too. The
Symantec AntiVirus Research Center Web site also includes Security
Analyzer, which will check your PC's vulnerability to information
leakage and unauthorized intrusions by hackers--basically, duplicating
the scans in the Norton Internet Security add-in to Norton
SystemWorks.
You can find out if your browser is revealing personal
information--your email address and the sites you last visited--or if
your computer is exposing information about its configuration to
Internet scanners. Symantec surveys show that vulnerability to these
threats range between 33 percent and 82 percent, depending on the type
of leak; and about 40 percent have ports that could be exploited by
hackers. A survey of firewall logs from Norton Internet Security users
demonstrated that each of the participants had experienced between 12
and 4,300 attempted intrusions during a one week period.
Symantec Security Check also can find out if your PC is one of an
estimated 29 percent already infected with a virus and/or a Trojan
horse and, therefore, susceptible to unauthorized Internet
communications.
Start by pointing your browser to
sarc.com
and clicking the Free Online Virus and Security Check link toward the
middle of the page. Down toward the bottom of the next page, click the
Run Security Check button.
In order to run Security Analyzer, your PC must be running Microsoft
Windows 9x, and AOL version 6.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 or
later with Java Applets, ActiveX controls, active scripting, and
cookies enabled. If you're going through a firewall, it must be
configured to transmit browser information (user agent) to the Web
server.
Click Continue Security Analyzer on the next screen and, if this is
your first time, Security Check will download a 200-Kb ActiveX program
to your PC that will take about two to four minutes to run through
several different scans.
At the end, click the View Personal Results button for a detailed
description of its findings. When done, hit the Back button to return
to the previous page and click Compare Your Results to see how you
stack up against the thousands of other people who have taken this
test. Symantec will ask to upload your results, but not personal
information. As you see in the survey, the overwhelming majority of
Web browsers are susceptible to these dangers. One solution for this
is Norton Internet Security 2000, which, naturally, is available for
immediate download from the site." |
