Stinger Utility Problems
Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to identify and eliminate specific viruses and developed by McAfee AVERT. It is not a alternate for full anti-virus protection, but rather a means to aid administrators and users when working with a system that has been infected by viruses, Trojans, worms etc. Stinger utilizes an innovative next-GEN scan engine technology, including process scanning, scan performance optimizations, and digitally signed DAT files. The versions of Stinger that have been released contain all families, and those related to it and is basically to deal with threats that are medium or have higher risk to the systems and it is updated only when a new medium or higher threat is discovered. The Stinger Utility is so small in size that it fits on a floppy and is capable of handling the most recent and malevolent malware.
The first problem that the McAfee AVERT Stinger Utility had was with relation to its ePO technology (ePolicy Orchestrator) that was however fixed unknowingly by its engineers as they were making further changes to the McAfee software. The flaw was such that it could have allowed hackers to take have power over the users computers, and pilfer data, embed malware, and erase files. The company did not treat it as a critical issue but now has urged all consumers of its e-Policy Orchestrator to install the updated version. It has been reported that consumer versions of the company's security software have not been affected and it is mainly the corporate versions.
Another problem is that the library used to identify the virus, worms, etc can be affected making it difficult to remove them because of a vulnerability that involves a flaw in the processing of LHA files by an Antivirus library which provides an opportunity to possible stack overflow attacks. A remote attacker without the need of user interaction can trigger the vulnerability, by sending an e-mail encloses with a crafted LHA file to the target McAfee Antivirus library on user's computer McAfee Antivirus library Versions earlier to 4400 are inclined to such attacks. This flaw was identified by an Atlanta based Security research firm, Internet Security Systems (ISS).
Also another problem mentioned earlier is that users tend to think of Stringer as a Anti Viral software which it is not. Stinger is not intended to substitute other Antivirus software because it does not defend against incoming viruses but only shares the Antivirus Library. Tools like Norton Antivirus and McAfee Virus Scan should be continually used as an active Anti-Virus.
Stinger at times fails to identify viruses that have got and have embedded themselves in the system; it basically deals with the most widespread threats. This is the reason that McAfee emphasizes on the use of Antivirus software. Also Stinger is not enabled to fix a virus, normally because the Windows System Restore functionality has default configuration of quarantining the infected file. In order to overcome this problem, Windows ME/XP users can stop system restore and fix the virus using Stringer.
The main drawback is that Stinger is not a supported application and McAfee AVERT does not make any guarantee about the products functionality.
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