I just downloaded the latest virus definitions for my box with Norton AntiVirus on it and it immediatly said that Brutus was a "hacktool" and as such defined as a virus and displayed several pop-up screens about it and denied access to it. I've had it on two boxes (one with Norton and the other with PC-Cillin) for 3 years and never got any alarms before. I also have never done anything with it except trying to figure out how it works (never hacked anything with it). Is this REALLY a virus ('hacktool") or just an attempt to control what software we have on our machines???

erm what is that hacktool ?
somethign to gain remote access to a PC right ?
this could be missused and those who really use it could ignore the message but I prefer showing this thingy as virus since this is the more secure way - when somebody really wants to harm you and "infected" you with a client of the remote access tool

The day norton suddenly complained that nmap and a few other windows versions of linux tools (can't remember what they all were now) were "hack" tools and deleted them without prompting, I uninstalled it and haven't used it since. (Kaspersky or AVG get the job done just as well.)

I can sort of understand it showing them to you incase a trojan is using your box to hack others, but if there's no known trojans/viruses on the system, labeling them as hack tools or worse seems more like scare tactics to me.

so this means that Symantec can instruct it's antivirus to delete or quarrantine ANY files that it doesn't like? The eventual abuse potential of this is scary...

take it as it is ... NAV just sucks ..
go for KAV this one is way more customizable and flexible

mhh....my fav is that :
GDATA Antivirus (german)
with a great double scan engine.....
but everybody likes another , i know

choose between KAV engine or bitdefender engine or take both ....
voila KAV and bitdefender uses KAV, too ...
voila KAV double pack

since TrendMicro's PC-Cillin comes with all of the Asus mobo's that I have bought so far I use that primarily and have no complaints other than their new policy of only giving 6 months of free updates, so you have to do it manually after that. With the new 7.1 scan engine it's BY FAR the fastest-scanning AV I've tested/seen (seconds compared to several minutes with Norton) and they also seem to update lot more frequently than others. I've never gotten infected in 4 years with it so I like it.
I'm more concerned about 3rd-party attempts to limit, censor or control what we can or can't have on our computers...


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(my main box at the moment)
Athlon XP 3200+ Barton @ 2400MHz/FSB200@1.79V
Thermaltake Volcano 9+ w/manual control
1536MB Corsair DDR434 2-3-2-5-1T
Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 (1007 BIOS)
Radeon 9800PRO (Cat 4.4)
Audigy 2 Platinum (EAX4 4.43)
2x36GB WD 10,000 rpm Raptors SATA RAID 0
Plextor PlexWriter Premium CD burner
Plextor PX-708A DVD burner
Antec TrueControl 550
21" Sony GDM-F500R CRT (analog)
17" NEC Multisync LCD 1760NX (digital)
MS Internet Keyboard Pro
MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0
XP Pro Sp1