The identity of "PIFTS.exe" finally turned out, Symantec, the developer of Norton, apologized on the official notice board

The other day,A mysterious executable file "PIFTS.exe" that pounds the whole world into a crucible of confusionHowever, at the official notice board of Norton, the identity was eventually announced by Symantec itself, which is the developer of Norton and also the distributor.

The identity of "PIFTS.exe" is from the following.
Norton product patch "PIFTS.exe" and Norton Users Forum - Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus - Norton Community

PIFTS.EXE discussion thread - Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus - Norton Community

The official explanation on the bulletin board at the beginning was Senior Director of Symantec, the developer of NortonDavecoleMr.

As background, on March 9th of the local time, Norton Internet Security, Norton Antivirus 2006, and 2007 for the patch "PIFTS.exe" at the Pacific Standard Time between 4:30 and 7:40 PM for about 3 hours It was released only. However, "PIFTS.exe" distributed at this time did not have a signature of Symantec, it was a kind of human error. As a result, the communication caught on the firewall, and a warning dialog etc. was displayed.

Of course it seems that reports began to rise to Symantec immediately after distributing this patch. The release of unsigned files like this one is a very rare event, it seems that there is no danger to Norton users, so there is no need to do anything.

There is an explanation about deletion and sweeping action on the official notice board, an individual develops a few dozen accounts in a few minutes, develops a thread related to PIFTS.exe, writes more than 200 bulletin boards in the next few hours We have created a user account for and said that there were 600 postings within the first hour. I told Symantec that this act was treated as a spammer.

In addition, as already reported in the Washington Post etc., there is now a page where malicious users attempt to distribute malware, spyware, etc. to the top of the search result of "PIFTS.exe" this time , I advise you to be careful when clicking the link to an unknown site.

For this case, I am a Symantec Norton bulletin board administratorTony WeissThere was explanation from Mr., there was nothing such as "conspiracy" or "hiding" about "PIFTS.exe", somewhere user vandalized the bulletin board and deleted the thread which the destroyed user set up , And only deleted the account involved in them. However, at this time some unrelated accounts are also involved, and if the account is deleted or it loses the authority to write it on the bulletin board though it is unrelated, it seems that it will restore if it can be contacted individually.

As for the matter whose explanation was delayed, I was only late because I gathered information, apologizing for that. Furthermore, regarding account deletion of a spammer which destroys a bulletin board, I am apologizing also about deletion by completely irrelevant users and also about deprivation.