[HN Gopher] NortonLifeLock Unveils Norton Crypto
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NortonLifeLock Unveils Norton Crypto
Author : tech234a
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-06-02 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (investor.nortonlifelock.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (investor.nortonlifelock.com)
| AaronFriel wrote:
| It's only a matter of time before bloatware shipped on OEM
| devices and "free subscriptions" for antivirus, warranties, etc.
| pay for themselves by doing a little mining in the background.
|
| And then, of course, it's only a matter of time before they're
| doing a lot of mining, and they're subsidizing the cost of the
| device, and a contract will require you to run the miner until
| it's been paid off.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I'm curious if it even makes sense to manufacture a computer
| and sell it, as opposed to renting it for whatever the highest
| value compute happens to be at the moment.
| firebaze wrote:
| Apologies for whatever, but thanks for this post; one more thing
| to look for to uninstall on relatives/acquaintances computers.
|
| Reason: products having "Crypto" or "Secure" in the name are
| usually a bag of bugs, doing much more damage than anything else.
| Why this is so is kind of a riddle to me; I don't know any
| product promising to secure a PC that isn't buggy and insecure,
| with the only exceptions being the inherent security of operating
| systems (windows, MacOS, Linux in ascending order).
| simias wrote:
| Isn't Ethereum going to migrate to PoS in the near future anyway?
| Not that it's the only red flag here, but it seems like this
| product is going to have a short shelf life lest they migrate to
| other coins.
| nailer wrote:
| For anyone else: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/proof-
| stake-pos.asp
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Odd they still using the Norton branding - it has been a while.
| Applejinx wrote:
| What is the sound of one bubble popping? :)
| woodruffw wrote:
| LifeLock is, of course, known best for:
|
| 1. Having their CEO be the target of multiple _effective_
| identity thefts, despite claiming to be protected by their
| signature product[1].
|
| 2. Their previous CEO being an identity thief himself[2].
|
| 3. Being fined by the FTC for outright lying about the efficacy
| of their product, and then being fined _again_ for operating in
| contempt of the original FTC agreement[3].
|
| Given their shady history, this foray into cryptocurrency is no
| particular surprise.
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lifelock-identity-theft/
|
| [2]: https://www.wired.com/2007/06/lifelock-founde/
|
| [3]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
| releases/2015/12/lifel...
| jessewmc wrote:
| Aside from the branding and history problems here, actually kind
| of surprising its been this long before a mainstream brand came
| up with a "vetted" crypto miner. Interesting.
|
| Press release is extremely vague, but I read this to be they have
| implemented their own eth mining client to set up their own pool?
| Normally miners and pools take a small cut, there is no mention
| of that here. Surely they are going to do the same? Are they
| going to cover their own payout transactions, or charge end
| users?
|
| Its possible this could actually be a bit compelling if they're
| not taking a cut, although way too late to the party, and
| ironically their reputation is starting out far worse than
| anonymously developed miners on popular pools.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| The intersection between people that buy their product and the
| people that has powerful machines that can mine crypto seems
| small
| walrus01 wrote:
| I think the target market is rubes who are 36-48 months or more
| late to crypto mining, think they can get rich quick, and
| desire to hop on board the bandwagon.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I simply cannot get over the haphazard rebranding effort. They
| literally took their logo into mspaint and appended "LifeLock" to
| the right side of it.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I took a double take at this because it seemed like a headline
| from The Onion. But then I realized this might actually be a real
| thing? Overall it left me with a very gross and icky feeling.
|
| If I were to make a ranking of businesses that I consider highly
| ethical and reputable, the lifelock company would be somewhere
| towards the bottom.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=lif...
| vmception wrote:
| This is actually hilarious if you read the article.
|
| They created a problem of their antivirus software flagging
| crypto miners, and instead of fixing that, they made their own
| crypto miner that is exempt from their flagging and said "see
| look, now its simpler and you don't have to disable your
| antivirus!"
|
| And then they said its more secure and _even simpler_ because
| all your crypto and keys get stored in the cloud, so you keep
| your crypto even if your harddrive /storage crashes.
|
| Server side crypto hack incoming in..... three... two....
|
| ( _double facepalm_ )
| spideymans wrote:
| Now that's a name I haven't heard in a decade.
| jayrot wrote:
| Apologies for a crass and unsophisticated reaction comment here
| but....this is the dumbest shit ever.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's more polite than my immediate reaction.
| zippergz wrote:
| I hope Peter Norton got paid enough to be worth enduring this
| running of his once good name into the ground.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If ever there was a technology press release that was deserving
| of a response consisting simply of a facepalm emoji, this is
| it.
| twoknee wrote:
| I assumed this would be an append-only/timelock backup solution
| for ransomware.
| lvs wrote:
| > select Norton 360 customers in Norton's early adopter program
| will be invited to mine for Ethereum.
|
| Wait, what? I thought this was going to be a ransomware product.
| What in the world is going on here?
| LegitShady wrote:
| My bet is in the long term a distributed crypto mining scheme
| where it uses the powers of everyone's grandmother's computer
| that still has norton installed.
| azornathogron wrote:
| Snake-oil company realises there is a new and poorly tapped
| market they can go for.
| fuddle wrote:
| Ethereum is moving from PoW to PoS, will this even be usable
| after the transition?
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Isn't lifelock the thing where the CEO bro said "here is my
| social, try to hack me" and then he was immediately hacked?
|
| Wow, can't imagine any sane person who would use this. Galaxy
| brain move to release it though.
| rhizome wrote:
| LifeLock only advertises in media channels popular with the
| ignorant, vulnerable, and/or paranoid. People who don't know
| that story and definitely don't know better.
| vmception wrote:
| Just like Protonmail if we're being fair
|
| Except with that one, a lot of otherwise tech savvy people
| just refuse to acknowledge the limitations and inability to
| verify privacy claims at any given point in time
| simias wrote:
| Has protonmail's advertising been misleading? I'm a happy
| user myself, but I don't think I've ever looked into their
| marketing.
| vmception wrote:
| People believe it is private and uncompromisable because
| of their use of client side encryption and claims of
| server side encryption and that their Switzerland
| location means they exist in a land where intelligence
| agencies won't coerce them or find a way to leak data.
|
| The reality is that they are forcing users to use client
| side javascript which can have anything in it. And Swiss
| privacy laws do not do what users claim. There is no way
| to verify the claims of privacy.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Not contradicting you in any way, but you can check out
| the javascript. Javascript deobfuscation is pretty
| sophisticated nowadays (maybe not) from my naive
| perception.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I think the complaint is that it takes a lot of work to
| check, each time you visit the site, that the JavaScript
| your browser downloads is really the same as the
| published (and assumed secure) source code (plus
| obfuscation, as you mention).
|
| Ideally there would be a mechanism in browsers to pin a
| specific version of a web app, and only let that app
| update (to a version with a specific hash) if the user
| explicitly gives it permission to.
|
| The nearest thing we have to that right now is the SRI-
| bookmarklet trick:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776456
| simias wrote:
| Oh I see. Yeah the "Swiss" thing is probably more
| folklore than anything, but admittedly for the client-
| side encryption you can use their IMAP bridge that's open
| source and therefore technically auditable and not quite
| as easy to modify on-the-fly.
|
| But any claim of security for emails will be contingent
| to a huge number of factors anyway lest you use end-to-
| end encryption so I see where you're coming from. Less
| technical people would probably have a hard time
| understanding the true security and privacy implications
| of protonmail.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| A lot of the implied security benefits are like the "100%
| fat free" labels on Swedish Fish. True, but of dubious
| value.
|
| People equate it with Swiss bank accounts, based on what
| they learned from James Bond movies.
| walrus01 wrote:
| anecdotal, of a number of people I know who run the SMTP
| (and IMAP, etc) infrastructure for some mid to large sized
| ISPs, none of them are protonmail customers. email was
| never meant to be secure in the way that they market it as.
| deckard1 wrote:
| the worst offenders by far are VPNs. Their advertising is
| usually shady and litters youtube, and there is simply no
| way of verifying their privacy claims. They don't log or
| monitor traffic? Okay fine I'll just take your word for it
| I guess.
| vmception wrote:
| exactly, they are all just internet resellers, and every
| single review site is affiliate marketing.
|
| "oh wow the blogger disclosed that they're paid to
| advertise them, that makes me trust the service even
| more!"
|
| people just need to understand there are just limitations
| with that concept. don't rely on them for doing anything
| criminal anonymously. but its fine to hide activity from
| the people in your house and ISP and circumvent geofenced
| streaming services.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It can be very informative (and slightly scary, if you know
| how some of this stuff really works) to look at print
| magazines targeted at the age 65+ crowd to see how certain
| categories of technology products are marketed and sold to a
| certain demographic.
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(page generated 2021-06-02 23:01 UTC)