Experience with Norton's "Data Protector"

[Gabriel_Toro]

All,

I am having all kinds of problems with Norton's Data Protector. This "feature" of Norton Antivirus (which came to my computer recently, via their periodic automatic updates) does not allow un-registered programs to write files with certain extensions (dangerous extensions such as csv or txt are blocked). I like the idea in principle, but it should be limited to truly dangerous extensions such as xlsm. "Registering" the software is not practical when it is under development and debugging, where one creates new executables every 5 minutes (and possibly alternative versions).

I am in a situation (probably not uncommon in today's business world, full of real and perceived threats), where I cannot change any settings in my computer. IT managers' top priority is security, and efficiency often comes second.

I would like to know if other users of this forum have come out with coping strategies against this hindrance. Has anyone found a protection from Data Protector?

Thanks.

PS:

This may be a related problem: Visual Fortran is giving me the following error message sometimes: Error    17     general error c101008d: Failed to write the updated manifest to the resource of file "C:\Users\.........\myprogram.exe". Access is denied.    mt.exe

I don't use the manifest, so the problem does not bother me much, but I would also like it to go away (I may need the manifest sometime).

[mecej4]

You may need to tell Norton AV to exclude your development directory tree from its "protection". See https://community.norton.com/en/forums/norton-data-protector-part-norton-22172 .

The development tools may similarly require that the %TMP% directory be unprotected in order to function.

[andrew_4619]

.txt files are reasonably safe because they do not provide any mechanism to include code, scripts, or macros that would be executed when the file is opened so is seems strange to block them. CSV when opened in Excel could lead to malicious activity however the route to protect from that  lies within the setting in Excel rather than blocking a useful file type. I would speak with your IT.

As commented above I get my AV to ignore the VS output folders as otherwise making software does not work. 

[mecej4]

EXE and other potentially harmful files can be given names that can deceive an unwary user. For example, if I create a file with a name such as

   "NastyVirus.txt                                                                              .exe"

and view the containing folder in the Windows Explorer, depending on the settings the blanks and ".exe" may be displayed as "..", which is easy to overlook, and I may think that the file is a TXT file. Similar mishaps can be caused by typing part of the file name and then pressing TAB at the command line.

[andrew_4619]

Yup, I never have that 'hide file extensions' setting in windows it causes no end of problems both real and potential. But a txt file is not a  hazard. Using the hidden extension argument you could block ALL files .