
Version 9.0 of Norton Antivirus spawned a file appropriately named "spacesuckingfile.xxxxxx" after it completed a virus scan.

The company also recommended that users 'Scan Compressed Files' to 'Off' in the Norton Auto-Protect pane of System Preferences to mitigate this vulnerability.
VIRUS BARRIER VS CLAMXAV ARCHIVE
Symantec posted an antivirus based protection signature to LiveUpdate on December 20, 2005, providing a heuristic detection for potential exploits of the Symantec decomposer RAR archive vulnerability. These vulnerabilities can be exploited remotely without user interaction in default configurations through common protocols such as SMTP. The vulnerability was as follows: During decompression of RAR files Symantec is vulnerable to multiple heap overflows allowing attackers complete control of the system(s) being protected.

VIRUS BARRIER VS CLAMXAV MAC OS X
While this circumstance doesn't negate the potential utility of having anti-virus software installed, and won't let the cautious rest easier should the currently mythical Mac OS X attack horde materialize, it should give pause to users who feel coerced into purchasing anti-virus software.įirst, let's look at some of the problems that have been caused, on a widespread basis, by Symantec's Norton AntiVirus: However, what the virus software companies aren't telling users in their barrage of press releases and dire statements to publications that dutifully pass claims of a rising threat onto readers as fact is that, to date, more problems have been caused by anti-virus software on Mac OS X systems than actual vulnerabilities thwarted. With scare tactic statistics like "a 228 percent increase in malware attacks over the past three years" - even though no single piece of Mac OS X malware has yet managed to successfully cause significant system damage or reliably spread - it's easy to see why some users are taking the bait.
VIRUS BARRIER VS CLAMXAV INSTALL
If a scan is taking longer than you’d expect, or you’ve a high volume of files and folders being scanned, you can choose Abort Scans from the menu to stop the process.With dubious reports of a nascent malware menace threatening Mac OS X's current status as (for all intents and purposes) a virus-free platform, many readers have inquired about the need for installation Mac OS X anti-virus software.Īsk McAfee or Symantec and you'll be met with an implore that users purchase, install and regularly use their Mac OS X virus scanning software. If you want to suspend Sentry for any reason, just choose Stop Watching from the menu and if you want to quit Sentry altogether (which you can’t do during a scan) then select Quit ClamXAV Sentry from the menu. Suspending or quitting Sentry and aborting scans Sentry also has a handy shortcut feature for updating virus definitions meaning you can do this directly from the Sentry menu without needing to launch ClamXAV.


When ClamXAV Sentry is active, it appears as an icon in your Mac’s menu bar, indicating one of five activities: To specify which folders you want Sentry to watch, just go to the Preferences option in the ClamXAV Sentry menu. If the new addition is clean, you won’t hear a peep but, if it’s infected, you’ll get a warning message prompting you to take action. Sentry is a really useful ClamXAV feature – as its name suggests, it keeps an eagle eye on your watched folders for any changes or additions to their contents and alerts ClamXAV to scan them.
