McAfee

Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky Tuesday ridiculed antivirus competitor McAfee as a less formidable and focused competitor now that it's part of chip giant Intel (NSDQ:INTC).

What's more, the Kaspersky CEO said that Intel has failed to deliver on its once highly touted plan to drive security breakthroughs by tightly integrating security software with Intel chips.

"They promised to kill the IT security market with a new hardware-based platform," said Kaspersky in a luncheon meeting with reporters in Boston. "I don't believe in that. It is like a Hollywood story."

Security professionals have urged organisations to test antivirus updates before live deployment, after a glitched McAfee anti-virus update last week left thousands of machines exposed.

On Monday night, McAfee issued an enterprise 100Mb Super DAT (Hotfix 793640) and a consumer fix (DAT 6809) for the borked updates which it rated as ‘critical’.

Facebook officials are launching a site on their social network aimed at making their 900 million-plus users and their systems more secure.

Facebook, in partnership with Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro and Sophos, on April 25 announced the Antivirus Marketplace, where users can download free six-month licenses or full versions of the companies’ anti-malware software for six months to a year, depending on which products they choose.

A glitched update released last week caused McAfee security products to crash, affecting email systems. 

The affected update (DAT 66822) was pushed out to corporate customers and affected six McAfee poducts including email and web security, email gateway, and GroupShield. McAfee said users should not upgrade to the affected DAT file and instead apply the subsequent fixed update (DAT 66823).

The number of malware samples discovered worldwide unfortunately surpassed expectations for 2011 overall, according to McAfee’s fourth quarter Threats Report.

Last year, McAfee researchers predicted that global malware occurrences would reach at least 75 million. By August 2011, the number already stood at 65 million and counting.

Xerox has announced plans to integrate McAfee security tech into its printers and other Internet-enabled devices.

"The office-equipment manufacturer will license McAfee's technology, which creates a security layer between the processor and the software stack to detect when malware is trying to tap system resources," writes CRN's Antone Gonsalves.

Security vendor McAfee, which is now owned by Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), is rolling out a patch for three flaws in its Endpoint Protection Software as a Service offering.

All three flaws are in ActiveX controls. One tricks the control into executing commands supplied by an attacker, the second lets attackers write to files on disk and the third lets attackers execute code with user privileges, McAfee said.

McAfee has turned to its parent company Intel to boost authentication and other features within McAfee's Cloud Security Platform, released in May.