Symantec Fixes Several Critical Vulnerabilities; Patch Your Products Now

Last month several critical security issues were reported in various Symantec security solutions. At the time, one was fixed right away, but several others were complex enough that the company needed more time. Now, Symantec has announced in a security advisory that all of those that were found by Tavis Ormandy were resolved.

The flaws impacted 25 Norton and Symantec products with varying issues from buffer overflows to memory corruptions errors to memory access violations. Most of them could be triggered remotely if a user opened a specially crafted file that most likely would arrive in a phishing email message. This serves as a reminder that we should always be on the lookout for phishing attempts.

Watch for the following indicators:

• Email messages with unexpected links or attachments;

• Any links included do not go where you expect. You can find out where they go by hovering over them with the mouse pointer or by holding down on the link for a few seconds on mobile devices;

• The sender is unfamiliar and/or the actual full email address does not match the name in the “from” field;

• Logos are incorrect or unprofessional looking;

• The language is misused, there are typos, and/or grammar and punctuation are incorrect.

In addition, these can also be triggered if a user visits a fake website, even if it’s just a quick visit. To avoid doing this, always be aware of what addresses you are typing into the browser. Even accidently mistyping something can result in a hacker taking advantage by typo squatting (also called do-jacking or domain jacking). This happens when a website is purchased that is intentionally a letter or two or some other simple variation of an actual site. The cybercriminals count on users mistyping the names on occasion and will put up fake sites to exploit this simple mistake.

More information about these particular vulnerabilities can be found by searching for the following CVE indicators: 

Whenever critical or security updates are made available for any product on any of your devices, be sure to apply them right away. This will prevent hackers from exploiting them once they have been disclosed. The longer you leave them open, the higher your risk of becoming a victim.