PIFTS.EXE update troubles Symantec
Symantec is facing complaints due to malfunctioning of a program file called PIFTS.exe in its productr Norton Internet Security and Norton Antivirus 2006 and 2007. PIFTS.exe is a update from symantec.
Users are reporting that the error messages are being popping out asking them if they wanted to install the PIFTS.exe file. Norton’s firewall would have let it pass, had it been digitally signed.
The update was available for about three hours and was pushed out to a small, “limited number” of Norton users, said Jeff Kyle, a group product manager of consumer products with Symantec.
PIFTS is a diagnostic program that Symantec update to users frequently to anonymously collect information such as the operating system and version number of the product being used in order to get the usage of end user. The troublesome, unsigned PIFTS.exe file is no longer being distributed, but it never represented any kind of security threat, Kyle said. “If a user would have accepted it they should have been fine, and if they declined it they should have been fine.
The problem will raise the worries of Symantec as it seem to be a hacking act because criminals began posting malicious Web pages that would pop up high on Google searches for PIFTS.exe.
