Malware pushers have been quick to exploit confusion over a patch that was released yesterday by Norton Security for users of older versions of Norton. The patch was accidentally unsigned, which caused Norton to throw an error referencing the “pifts.exe” file. As a result, hords of Norton users have been searching Google for pifts.exe (or searching in their other favourite search engine for pifts.exe).
However, the malfeasors quickly – and I mean with astonishing rapidity – pounced on the situation and put up pages purporting to explain pifts.exe. Pages which were quickly indexed by Google as the top results when searching for pifts.exe. Pages which in reality force malware downloads on unsuspecting users. Users known to be using old versions of Norton.
To make matters worse, bots started flooding the Norton Security forums with tons of garbage about “pifts.exe” – causing Norton to shut down the forums – the very forums that the Norton users were turning to looking for answers. That in turn caused all the more Googling for pifts.exe.
And so, if you have arrived here yourself after Googling or otherwise searching for information about Norton’s message about pifts.exe – well, where you really want to be is on the Norton site, which now has a page with the true information for you, here: Norton’s site information about pifts.exe
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