Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia will offer mobile antivirus software through F-Secure as one of the features in its new Nokia 6670 smart phone when it is released in October. The Symbian OS (operating system) smart phones will provide on-device protection, similar in fashion to antivirus protection programs for PCs, with automatic over-the-air antivirus updates for a monthly fee. The software will not come loaded into the device, but can be downloaded from the F-Secure website, according to Nokia spokeswoman Karoliina Lehmusvirta.

A new version of the Bugbear virus is spreading quickly on the internet, according to alerts posted by leading antivirus companies. The new variant, called Bugbear.B, was first detected yesterday and shares many of the same characteristics as the first Bugbear virus, which appeared in September last year and was also known as 'Tanatos', according to Finland-based antivirus company F-Secure.

Symantec this week unveiled the 2007 editions of its consumer Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security desktop products, plus a third new offering called Norton Confidential that protects e-commerce transactions. Symantec often adds features to its consumer-security software, which is sometimes purchased by small businesses, and includes those features in the enterprise editions that can be remotely managed. In Norton AntiVirus 2007, the consumer antivirus and antispyware product, a rootkit detection and eradication capability has been added that will likely become part of enterprise products.

A faulty antivirus update from McAfee that mistakenly identified hundreds of programs as a Windows virus has resulted in some companies accidentally deleting significant amounts of data from affected computers. The McAfee update DAT 4715, released on Friday, was designed to protect computers against the W95/CTX virus. But because of a programming error, the update also incorrectly identified, renamed and quarantined hundreds of legitimate executables - including popular ones such as excel.exe, lsetup.exe, uninstall.exe, shutdown.exe and reg.exe.

Computer Associates caused some headaches last week after its antivirus software inadvertently flagged part of the Windows OS (operating system) as malware. The Sans Internet Storm Center reported the problem on Friday, saying an overnight update to CA's eTrust Antivirus signatures had caused the software to flag a security-related process in Windows as malicious. The faulty update caused some Windows 2003 servers to crash and become unusable, Sans said. The Sans note on this issue can be found here.

Symantec has unveiled new versions of its Norton security products - beefing up some of the real-time and automated features--and will release them in the next few weeks. Being updated are Norton AntiVirus, Personal Firewall, and AntiSpam, all of which will be bundled in the upcoming Norton Internet Security 2005. Norton AntiVirus will ship separately in August, with the remaining applications and the suite to follow in mid-September.

Symantec has announced an updated version of its Mobile AntiVirus software to protect Windows-based smart phones. The enterprise version of Mobile AntiVirus for Windows Mobile 5.0, which supports Symantec's LiveUpdate via cellular service, includes a management console that can report device activity and schedule scanning and updates, according to Tim Boyd, product marketing manager.

The stocks of major antivirus software vendors were trading lower today after Microsoft announced the release of beta anti-spyware technology it bought in December and said it would begin giving away an improved tool to remove worms and viruses from its customers' computers. Following Microsoft's news, shares of Symantec were down by more than 6 percent and shares in rival McAfee were down by around 4 percent in Thursday's late-afternoon trading. While the free antivirus and virus removal tools are not an immediate threat to the products from those companies, the releases could signal tougher times ahead for desktop security vendors, as Microsoft uses its size and influence to expand into markets now dominated by those companies, industry experts say.

Trend Micro will become the latest major antivirus software company to provide protection against mobile phone viruses, with new antivirus and antispam software for mobile phones running the Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile operating systems. The product contains protections against mobile threats like the recent Skulls Trojan and Cabir worm, as well as filtering for SMS (Short Message Service) spam.

Microsoft is alpha-testing an upcoming antivirus product, according to industry sources. They claim the antivirus software works as a "behaviour blocker" that monitors different events and actions on computers. If the event or action is typical of virus or is harmful, it will be prevented.