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Is the Firefox 22.0 update going to disable my Symamtec protection?

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  • 6 am na jafe-jafe bii
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It says it will disable my Symantec Intrusion Prevention 13.3.0.9-5 so I shouldn't update, right?

It says it will disable my Symantec Intrusion Prevention 13.3.0.9-5 so I shouldn't update, right?

Saafara biñ tànn

jmk909er, what are you still not sure about. Your antivirus will continue to work as normal as the disable message was about the Extension version you have that was not compatible with Firefox 22.0.

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please read

but this doesnt mean you wont be protected, the toolbar is seperate from the actual program

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I do not have a symantec toolbar and I don't want my anti virus to be disabled

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the Intrusion Protection addon will be disabled but norton is still protecting you in the background, norton though will fix this suddenly, so no firefox will not turn off norton.

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Not so sure about this, I think I'll wait.

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Youre probabaly likely more vunerable for viruses running firefox 21 than updating to 22 and still having norton on

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Saafara yiñ Tànn

jmk909er, what are you still not sure about. Your antivirus will continue to work as normal as the disable message was about the Extension version you have that was not compatible with Firefox 22.0.

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Sure, why not? It has disabled everything else!!! (my apologies for not helping)

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After doing some research on Symantec's Intrusion Detection System, I thought I should really respond to this thread as their is an incredible amount of misinformation going on here.

Symantec's Intrusion Prevention add-on is designed to work with Firefox to help safeguard the browser from internet based attacks.

This is not the same as the Norton Safe Web toolbar, this is completely and totally a separate product. Norton Safe Web just checks the url of a site against their database to make sure it is not already flagged. Firefox does the same thing natively and checks the url against Google's database.

The Symantec Intrusion Prevention add-on is designed to work with Symantec Endpoint's Intrusion Prevention system. This system was originally incorporated in Sygate Technologies firewall product that Symantec bought and added onto by Symantec. With version 12.1 of Symantec Endpoint, Symantec added a browser add-on that was previously not part of Symantec Endpoint 11.

Symantec's Intrusion Prevention system is part of it's Endpoint Product Suite but is actually a separate product than the antivirus. Symantec's Intrusion Prevention System is designed to protect against known attacks and attack methods, but by itself is not a file scanner like the antivirus.

The best thing I can tell you is that even though Firefox 22 does not support the current add-on, the vast majority of attacks that the Intrusion Prevention Systems protects against are blocked without the toolbar active.

The following two links show that the definitions for endpoint 11 & endpoint 12.1 block the same attacks, even though endpoint 11 does not have a browser addon:

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/securityupdates/detail.jsp?fid=sep&pvid=sep11_32&year=2013&suid=SAV11_32-SU944-20131022.001&tabid=older

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/securityupdates/detail.jsp?fid=sep&pvid=sep1213&year=2013&suid=SEP_Jaguar-SU656-20131022.011


Symantec added the add-on to help protect against any browser specific threats that may be discovered and prevented against, for example, the firefox esr browser vulnerability used to identify many of those using TOR for illegal purposes that was used by the US government.

The thing is current versions of Firefox are safe from this vulnerability and all known current vulnerabilities.

You are much, much safer to make sure that you are using the latest version of Firefox or the latest version of Firefox esr, which the vulnerabilities have been patched than using an old version of Firefox with the Symantec Intrusion Detection add-on.


So, in summary of my post. Yes, the Symantec Intrusion Prevention toolbar in Firefox does help to safeguard Firefox from web based attacks but it is much more IMPORTANT that a person uses and up to date, current version of Firefox, ie. Firefox 24, or Firefox 17.0.9 ESR (as of the time I am currently writing this) than using an old version of Firefox that is compatible with the Symantec Intrusion Prevention toolbar.

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