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.
Either Microsoft or Brave fixed it so the Brave browser no longer works on Windows 7. So I’ve moved back to Firefox until I can get something else going. I tried Chrome, but the Google virus/spyware drove me away. (Yes, I know Brave was basically just a skin for Chrome, but at least they weren’t as blatant.)
I stopped using Norton after Peter Norton sold his business to Symantec.
Yeah, I used the Norton Utilities extensively in the 80’s. Peter Norton was my hero. But after Symantec bought it it went right into the toilet.
Is it a mistake to sign on with Edge (beta), when my paid Malwarebytes has kept my laptop going like the Energizer Bunny?
The problem is that Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) invasively goes into the memory of every running app on your PC and modifies them into insert shims to intercept system calls. This was a dumb design choice, because Microsoft has special hooks inside the kernel to intercept system calls for anti-virus vendors so they don’t have to hack running apps like that.
The shimming of the user mode memory of an app is what viruses do to steal your data. My own commercial app checks for such shims and refuses to run if they are detected. This is similar to what Mictosoft Code Integrity does for their own system apps and DLLs. I had to rewrite my code to specifically detect SEP to avoid the false tamper alerts.
Bottom line: SEP is badly designed and should be avoided. (I recommend switching to Kaspersky, which has an excellent virus detection rate and does not tamper with your apps.)
Maybe it’s time for me to switch to McAfee.
I have been using Symantec products for more than 20 years. Completely dependent on their Password manager. No significant problems.
Recommendations?
No suggestions on password managers, I don’t use them (don’t trust ‘em).
For anti-malware in general, though, most AVs are good enough, but you can check their compared effectiveness here:
https://www.av-comparatives.org/consumer
Though if I were to suggest something that might be worth checking out it would be this Eset package, “ESET SMART SECURITY PREMIUM EDITION 2020’, it stores and prefills passwords in addition the anti-malware stuff and you can try it for 30 days free:
https://www.eset.com/us/home/smart-security-premium
That's easy: "No significant problems" == Stick with what works.
That, and "sleep with one eye open". :-)
Thanks for the reply. I really respect your expertise. I will be re-evaluating my relationship with Symantec.
Any suggestions for a password manager?
I currently use KeePass on Windows, Linux, and Mac (where it’s called “MacPass”). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KeePass
Easy to use, intuitive, and flexible in terms of what it lets you store and how you organize it. In addition to the usual account-relevant username-password-website data, you can also add arbitrary text comments, RSA encryption keys, documents, all sorts of useful stuff associated with each account. It’s got a random password generator function, and more.
It’s quite secure (you have one master password to encrypt the database).
It’s open source, so there aren’t any “backdoors” or proprietary hooks.
And it’s free. :-)
And just for the record, I’m not associated with the product or its development in any way whatsoever. Just a very satisfied user.
I don’t know if you just forgot the /sarc tag.... but IMO that’s jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I don’t personally consider McAfee any better than Symantec. They’re both horribly bloated, and often cause more problems than they claim to solve.
To each their own, but I wouldn’t touch either one with somebody else’s ten-foot pole, much less my own.
I rely on Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, and haven’t experienced any system trouble from either one, nor any malware hits. So far so good.
Thanks Bro, for the KeePass info. I will ck it out!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.