Symantec Arms Consumers Against PC Hijackers with Norton AntiBot

Symantec Arms Consumers Against PC Hijackers with Norton AntiBot

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the release of Norton AntiBot, the industry’s first targeted security solution to combat the growing botnet pandemic. Norton AntiBot is a real-time bot detection and removal solution for consumers. Norton AntiBot monitors PC applications and processes around-the-clock, offering an additional layer of protection that complements existing security solutions to protect PCs from unauthorized access and tampering.

“Consumers need to know that they may be directly implicated in the criminal activities being perpetrated by botnets – if not by having their own identity or personal information stolen, then by being part of a network of zombie PCs carrying out large scale criminal activities like massive spam distribution and phishing email schemes,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Consumer Products Division, Symantec. “We’re estimating millions upon millions of bot-infected PCs in existence today, with the vast majority of these users having no idea of what’s going on behind the scenes of their own computer. Norton AntiBot is an important new tool for strengthening consumer security and stopping these insidious threats.”

Symantec Security Response is seeing the number of bot-infected computers continue to rise. In Symantec’s latest Internet Security Threat Report (Volume XI, March 2007) Symantec found that during the last six months of 2006, there were more than 6 million active bots which is approximately 30 percent more zombie computers than observed in the previous six-month period.

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