Symantec knew of Slammer ???

Obtained from wired.com :

Security firm Symantec withheld information about at least one big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it, possibly harming millions of Internet users.
Symantec claims to have identified the Slammer worm that ravaged the Internet during the last weekend of January hours before anyone else did.


Symantec then shared the information only with select customers, leaving the rest of the global community to get slapped around by Slammer.

In a Feb. 12 press release about its DeepSight Threat Management System, Symantec boasts that the company "discovered the Slammer worm hours before it began rapidly propagating ? then delivered timely alerts and procedures (to DeepSight users), enabling administrators to protect against the attack."

Security experts are angry that Symantec did not publicly release any information the company had regarding Slammer.
"This appears to be what I would term gross negligence," said Jeff Johnstone of the Diamond Technical Group, a security consulting firm. "This was not prior knowledge of a bug or exploit, but was knowledge of a pending worldwide attack on the infrastructure of the Internet. That type of information is always shared among peers within the security community."

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Unless you are a paid Symantec DeepSight Threat Management System customer, you would not have received the early notification.


Security experts acknowledged that Symantec has a right to offer exclusive security news to its users. But they added that in a connected world, threats like Slammer also require companies to act for the common good.

Antivirus companies typically distribute samples of viruses to their competitors as soon as a new strain is spotted, despite the fact that it would be competitively advantageous for a company to be the only one with an updated antivirus program capable of identifying the latest plague.

Slammer scanned systems in such an aggressive manner that some countries initially assumed it was a targeted attack against their national infrastructure.
Some security experts doubt that Symantec spotted Slammer as early as the company claims.
"I think this is mostly marketing hype," said security researcher Robert Ferrell. "They might have seen some of the initial traffic associated with the worm's activities, but I doubt very much that they correctly identified both the source and the true nature of that activity."
"But if they did detect and correctly interpret the signs of Slammer before anyone else and they chose not to make that information public, then they're just as responsible for the damages done by the worm as the author," Ferrell added.

"If I witness a felony but refuse to call 911 because the victim hasn't paid me money to do so, I'm technically an accessory to that crime, not to mention a really rotten citizen."
Wee did not respond to requests for further clarification of Symantec's policy regarding the public release of threat information.

It's typical of big business. They can crush the common people and their "rights" but if an average joe does something wrong the police are bashing down his door.

Makes me feel guilty for buying a copy of Norton Antivirus, good thing the other one...hmph... ..*moderator starts strangling FD* Ahh! Can't breathe...must run......help me...