SirCam turns the air blue as AV spat hots up

NEWS Anti-virus software company MessageLabs has labelled rival Symantec a waste of time after its software was breached by the malicious SirCam worm. A number of instances have been reported of Symantec's Norton anti-virus software at the email gateway failing to pick up the bug, prompting a vicious war of words between Symantec and its competitors. Alex Shipp, anti-virus technologist with MessageLabs, said customers of Symantec should be pressing the firm to fix its email engine as soon as possible as there is clearly a bug in the system. Shipp continued: "[Symantec's] software is clearly not as good as ours. Are people not fed up of seeing viruses get through in this way? " Richard Saunders, PR and communications director at Symantec, defended his company's software and said although its email gateway had been breached, other security back-up software within its AV suite, picked up the bug so none of its customers were actually infected. Saunders added: "It's not our style to have a pop at our competition, but when this type of incident happens, I guess its too tempting for some people." Saunders confirmed an official patch is available from Symantec. For related news see:
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