outbound traffic detected norton power eraser

First we believe a faulty IPS signature update caused a spike in false positive alerts, in other words an alert about a condition that wasn’t in fact true. We think there were two contributory issues that were related. So why do we believe there were a spike in alerts over the last two months? The “Outbound Traffic Detected” alert is our technology’s way of telling you “you are infected!” Our general recommendation to customers who believe they are infected is to run Norton Power Eraser and so that is what the IPS alert recommends.

We realized that infected computers will often “phone home” to either upload your sensitive information to a remote attacker or to download new instructions on what to do next on your computer, and because our IPS watches outbound traffic too, a few years ago, we figured out a way to leverage this capability to spot the telltale signs of the outbound traffic associated with an infected computer.

We wanted to be able to detect this condition and do something about it. In exceptional circumstances a threat may slip by our defenses and infect a computer. The remaining attacks go on to be blocked by our other detection technologies. Based on our telemetry it routinely blocks upwards of 50% of all attacks across our entire customer base. Its primary purpose is to detect and block malicious traffic from ever entering your machine in the first place. As some of you may know already, our Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) works closely with the Norton Firewall to monitor all traffic entering and leaving your computer. So here is what I have learned:įirst let me start by explaining what the alert was originally designed to do. Hopefully this note will shed some light on the issue. I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you what I discovered and what fixes we are putting in place.įirst I’d like to thank you for been patient with the repeated alert notification issue! We understand that our response is overdue and I apologize for taking so long to update you on the issue.

Some we have already fixed and another fix is coming shortly. Over the last couple of months we have been noticing a lot of reports connecting an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) “Outbound Traffic Detected” alert to a recommendation to run Norton Power Eraser and so I’ve spent some time investigating the issue and have discovered a few issues.

Outbound traffic detected norton power eraser