Staff WritersFortune 500 companies are vulnerable to a new version of a virus that attacks anti-virus software from Symantec, according to security solution firm PatchLink.
The software is used specifically by Fortune 500 companies to protect networks from virus attacks.
The Rinbot virus was first patched on May last year, however the new version has a way around this patch.
A division of Time Warner, which uses the software, was hit by this virus late last week.
According to PatchLink’s director in Australia and New Zealand, Chris Wood, this latest attack shows that businesses still need to get to grips with keeping their IT protection measures up-to-date.
“Considering that computer hackers are a continuous threat to businesses, it is quite astonishing that this hole has been left unprotected for so long,” Wood says.
“Once a security patch has been announced by a security vendor – it is like a red rag to a bull. Security hackers now have the opportunity to reverse engineer the security code that has been published, which enables then to write a computer virus to exploit the hole in the network.”