Posted on 10/26/2019 1:09:05 PM PDT by dayglored
Fourth time in three months when Symantec's antivirus crashes something.
For the fourth time in three months, a Symantec security product is crashing user apps, and this time it's the latest Chrome release, v78, which rolled out earlier this week, on Tuesday, October 22.
According to reports on Reddit [1, 2] the Google support forums [1, 2], and in comments on the official Google Chrome blog, Symantec Endpoint Protection 14 is crashing Chrome 78 instances with an "Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage." error, as seen in the screenshot above.
Users have been unable to use Chrome 78 at all, according to reports, with the browser refusing to load any web pages.
The errors have been plaguing users for the past two days, with the vast majority of reports coming from enterprise environments, where SEP installs are more prevalent.
While Symantec did not respond to a request for comment from ZDNet, the company did publish a support document admitting the issues.
According to the antivirus maker, the issues are only affecting SEP 14 users on Windows 10 RS1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2016 operating systems. Symantec users on other OS versions can fix this by updating to the latest SEP 14.2 release.
Users of Microsoft Edge Chromium are also impacted, but the Chromium-based Edge version has not been officially released; hence there are almost no users impacted by this issue in the real world.
The issue of SEP crashing Chrome 78 browsers should have not surprised Symantec staff, who received early warnings about this more than three months ago, according to a bug report filed in early August while Chrome 78 was still in testing in the Canary channel.
Symantec blamed the issue on Microsoft's Code Integrity security feature, which Google uses to protect the Chrome browser process.
As a temporary solution, Symantec recommends that users exclude Chrome from receiving protection from their antivirus product, or modify their Chrome clients, so the browser starts without Code Integrity protections.
However, this opens the browser to various attacks and is not recommended as long as users can simply use another browser until this is fixed.
The instructions for both solutions are detailed in the Symantec support document linked above.
This is not the first time that Symantec has borked user systems or their apps. There have been at least three other major incidents in the past three months.
In August, Symantec and Norton antiviruses blocked the new Windows updates signed with the SHA2 algorithm because the products weren't updated to handle the new update scheme, despite Microsoft announcing the changes six months in advance.
Also in August, Symantec Data Loss Prevention crashed Google Chrome 76 browsers on macOS.
Earlier this month, in October, the same SEP antivirus caused Windows 7, 8, and 10 systems to enter a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) state after receiving the October 2019 Patch Tuesday updates. Some organizations reported having as much as 10,000 systems enter BSODs.
TURN OFF THE SECURITY FEATURE IN THE BROWSER!
Oh, yeah, right. That's a great idea.
The way Google products work, the AV likely thought it was spyware.
I don’t know anybody who uses Symantec antivirus.
I know a lot of people and companies who have STOPPED using it.
Symantec seems over endowed with lame excuses and short on results.
I gave ‘em up for that [BLEEP] years ago.
There are free AVs I would recommend before it. Any one, along with the paid version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware will keep a person in good shape vs. malware.
Leo Leport said you jot heedcNY 3rd party anti virus withbWindows 10. Defender is mire than capable.
That is good enough for me. Adios bloatware.
the simplest and most effective thing one can do to near-bullet-proof protect ANY Windows system, is to create two accounts: one is a normal administrative account that is always created by default, the other is a Limited User account. Do your work in the Limited User account and go to the administrative account only to add, delete, update programs and printers ... turn off all updates and remove and turn off all antivirus programs ... you’ll have the most stable possible windows system that way ...
In such a case, I’d still prefer to set up my own PC security/protection. I’m a control freak, I reckon.
Here’s the most recent AV programs effectiveness comparison -
https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/malware-protection-test-september-2019
Defender and Malwarebytes for me.
Spectrum doesn’t force an install; it’s offered free just for the asking.
I use Norton Security Suite since Comcast provides it with my cable internet. I also use Chrome and have had no issues.
Symantec IS a virus unto itself. So is McAfee. Ever try to uninstall these programs? They make you download uninstall software that you run to uninstall the main app. Then you have to uninstall the uninstall software.
I’ll sometimes run a scan with Norton Security Scan, which is a stand-alone temporary scanner. But for real time, AVG is good enough. Eset32 (paid) is about the best AV around, to my thinking.
Wouldn’t have Chrome or any other Google spyware on my PCs. Got Android on my smartphone, but I don’t do anything private or anything that needs security with it. With Google, you are the product - or more correctly, your private & personal information is.
ESET NOD32. Fixed.
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