Hackers are generating these variants in high volume by taking pre-existing threats and packing or encrypting them by using packer kits and custom encryptors, sometimes as often as on a per-download basis. Last year alone, Symantec identified 240 million new threat variants but less than 200 actual new threat families. In fact it is not unusual today for most victims to get an infection that is unique to their machine. Today, hackers have moved to a micro-distribution model where millions of variants are created and distributed far and wide to very small numbers of victims. A couple of years ago, the norm was to see relatively few threat variants distributed to millions of users. A new micro distribution model for malicious threats.The threat landscape has radically changed over the last few years and that has driven the need for new approaches to protection. I thought I would share with you some of the background on why we developed this new engine. It combines aggressive heuristics and advanced removal capabilities to combat the newest and toughest threats. Symantec Maximum Repair (SMR) is a brand new security engine that drives our new Norton Power Eraser recovery tool.

Norton power eraser