Tuesday, March 10, 2009

PIFTS.EXE: Symantec finally own up

So, the world can rest easy in their beds. A message tucked away on Symantec's forums-- the same forums from which all communication about the issue was previously banned-- in which they have finally owned up to what happened:
  • they released a patch to do some boring things that any old patch might have done
  • but they released the patch unsigned, causing it to hit the firewall when it otherwise wouldn't have done
  • because some of the posts on the Symantec forum were judged to be abusive, all posts were pulled down.
Whilst this seems to be an astonishing example of customer relations, and has brought the world's attention to the kind of behaviour that such patches may be conducting on a routine basis, it does at least appear that the Feds are not about to plunder our computers for illicit chocolate chip cookie recipes. We were spared... this time.

(And yes, I did back up my recipe collection... just in case.)

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