Symantec fixes mail deletion flaw in security suite

IDG News Service - Symantec Corp. has fixed a flaw in part of its Norton Internet Security 2003 suite that can cause e-mail to be deleted before it reaches a user's in-box, the company said today.
Users had complained that Norton Internet Security 2003 was deleting e-mail. For such e-mail, all that appeared in the in-box was a message with "Symantec Email Proxy Deleted Message" in the subject line, said Katherine James, a Symantec spokeswoman in the U.K.
"We had a small number of users of Norton Internet Security 2003 who reported that the product was inadvertently deleting e-mails," said Jones, adding that the first incident was reported Oct. 14. Symantec issued a software patch to fix the flaw earlier this week. The patch can be downloaded through the application's online update feature, James said.
The flaw lies in the antispam part of Norton Internet Security 2003, a suite that includes antivirus, firewall, privacy control, spam alert and parental control software. The antispam feature is meant to flag any unwanted commercial e-mail, coming in to an in-box.
"If a user was running the computer continuously and was receiving a large volume of e-mail, or they had configured their e-mail client to check the mail server frequently, the Norton Spam Alert could cause memory allocation errors, which could cause the e-mail deletion," James said.
Symantec believes only a small number of users have been affected by the flaw because of the small number of complaints. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company, however, won't say how many customers complained or where those customers were located. Norton Internet Security 2003 is sold around the world.
Users can download a patch that fixes the memory allocation error through the application's online update feature, James said.