So in reading the recent blog by Aubry I got confused, I’ll confess. I’m not sure what a PIFTS.EXE is, Grey Hat’s are, or  why they would send information to Africa. One thing I did get out of it is that IF they do manufacture these viruses to keep their own business going then that is mucho bad. Peoples personal information are stored on their computers and being somebody who lost a computer to viruses in the past I take this personally. Not only did I lose all my school work but i also lost all the pictures I took during the summer going into college and my first 2 years at school. People may not think a computer virus is a big deal but lets take this from a different angle.

Lets say a virus for humans comes out that makes you forget everything that you did for the past three years and also makes you randomly yell out information such as your date of birth, social security number, and credit card numbers. Then a company comes out with a cure for it, we will make up a random name for this company, lets say… ummm… Notron. Now Notron sells the cure to everyone but they realize that this is the main source of the profit for company and don’t want their company to pull a Circuit City (too soon?). All of a sudden, despite Notrons best efforts, the virus starts infecting more and more people. Notron raises the price of their service and business is going well for them. Then rumors that they are spreading this virus arise. Isn’t that something that should be looked into? Wouldn’t Congress have a committee looking into these allegations the second they came out? So why is the true life rumor treated any differently?

Now I understand that at this time the government has bigger problems than to look into every little claim and I am fine with that but even I, being a nearly computer illiterate, have heard of people mentioning this issue for years. So why has it never been investigated before this? why are computer savy people not getting together right now to investigate this? Think about how much this costs the average person; between taking your computer to be cleaned by geek squad, to time you waste, to buying  a new computer I’m guessing the price is pretty expensive. I would guess that the amount of money American citizens spend on fixing their computers in one week could pay for a team of investigators to put these rumors to rest. Norton should be more than willing to help in anyway possible since these claims are so untrue (I am just assuming that they are untrue because it would take a truly evil company lead by some of the biggest douche bags the world has ever seen for this to be true and I don’t believe that Norton is a company like that).

So lets investigate this so that we can put these ever present rumors to rest. Then Norton can be put back up with the likes of Batman and Superman as one of the few doing everything possible to protect the public.

Jeffrey Bogosian

Photo Editor

Blogger Extraordinaire

I made a polite and reasonable post on the Norton forums asking a few on the record questions. Amidst a sea of spam threads posted by The Internet, curious Anons bumped my thread hoping for a legitimate response. It lasted a few hours, but it seems their team finally organized…

… and what do you know? A legitimate thread was deleted.

Hiding from the media is a stupid idea. If it’s not me, it’ll be someone bigger. Dealing with journalists and 4chan is like trying to get my seventeen year old sister home before curfew. Scream all you want, but they’re going to do what they want, regardless. They find a way around the tiniest loophole or technicality.

*yawn* Still haven’t slept. Stupid midterms.

- Aubrey

There are some nights when you’re up late with your nose in a text book, cramming for midterms… and you stumble upon some delicious e-conspiracies!

Oh, dear, sweet Internet, you’ve given me yet another reason to utterly loathe Symantec. I’d heard rumors in the past about them manufacturing viruses, which I honestly don’t doubt (though obviously I make no claims either way. I’ve yet to see proof.)… If there were no viruses, then the Anti-Virus companies would be out of business. Let’s face it, the bulk of the hackers on the net are Grey Hat. If you run into something malicious, nine times out of ten you were sticking your nose where you probably shouldn’t have been, and you picked up something nasty (much like the college dating scene – Ewwww, I went there).

There’s a curious process that is apparently part of some update… but it’s sending the personal information of Norton AV users to Africa? The details are hazy, mostly because Symantec seems to be desperately deleting anything related to the mystery. As I’m rapidly F5ing, I keep seeing even innocent inquiries about PIFTS.EXE get threads banned and accounts on the Norton forums deleted. The longest lasted about four minutes and contained almost no information.

The /b/tards have their hands on it, but love them or hate them, Anonymous is good at getting information out there. It will be interesting what this corporation has to say for itself.

It’s one of those moments where it feels good to be the media. This isn’t libel, this is me reporting what I’m observing.

So… the question is, what do you have to hide, Symantec? If PIFTS.EXE isn’t a huge deal, why don’t you just explain yourselves? Bad business, mates. In your line of work, there IS such a thing as bad publicity. ;)

Since the sun is starting to rise and I’ve got studying to do, I refer you to the following links so that you can follow this bizarre conspiracy theory as well:

Open discussion on the conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theories run rampent due to PIFTS.EXE

Norton forums (you’ll see that any PIFTS.EXE threads quickly die.)

From Yahoo! Answers: Anyone know what PIFTS.exe is?

Discussion on the Zone Alarm Forums ( <3 ZA, personally... )

Analysis of PIFTS.exe from Anubis (A service which states that it will analyze all Windows executable files)

An Internet acquaintance of mine had the following to say:

“Both of my threads about pifts were deleted and I was banned from Norton. The first directly mentions pifts and what it does. Deleted and banned after 2 minutes. The second mentioned some af4sd4.exe or whatever that accessed two foriegn IP addresses, (Both which pifts attempts to access), and a bunch of other things, Like causing popups and slowing my computer down in general. This thread was immediately deleted and I was banned. The second thread did not mention pifts in any way short of mentioning the IP’s it connects to.”

Curiouser and curiouser…

What I find most interesting is that Symantec employees allegedly seem to be working via other websites to also suppress information. Rest assured, if I find anything concrete, I’ll be publishing it here. Freedom of the press is a glorious thing, indeed.

Peace,
Aubrey Ramsdell
Torch News Editor