Norton AV vs. Brutus

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.

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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???

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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


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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.


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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...


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


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


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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 :D


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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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