McAfee.com Launches *69-Style Utility

McAfee says its snazzy new online utility, McAfee Visual Trace (MVT), will track hacker attacks, spam problems, and Internet bottlenecks and determine their origin.

by Michael Singer of siliconvalley.internet.com [September 11, 2001]

Online anti-virus firm McAfee.com (NASDAQ:MCAF) says its new utility will do for system administrators what the phone companies did for consumers—trace a bad call back to its source.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company Monday unveiled its McAfee Visual Trace (MVT), a new utility that in effect, tracks hacker attacks, as well as spam and Internet bottlenecks.

With McAfee Visual Trace, a user simply enters any type of Internet address (e.g. URL, e-mail address, or IP address) and MVT maps the route from the user's computer to the target computer and all connecting nodes through a World map view.

MVT also collects available key information such as the name of the organization that the target computer is registered with to the network, the organization's phone number and email address, and the physical address of the target computer's originating server.

By revealing this information, the company says MVT becomes a powerful tool to help discourage hackers, e-commerce scam artists, on-line fraud operators and spammers from conducting negative activities freely on the Web.

"As we continue to migrate toward a cyber lifestyle, the issues of security and privacy on the Internet have come to the forefront of people's minds," says McAfee.com president and CEO Srivats Sampath. "This service not only augments a user's existing Web defenses, but also provides a powerful tool to report hackers and other online frauds to their ISPs or law-enforcement authorities."

The new utility is available for $19.95 as part of a limited time offer. The regular price is $39.95.

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