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images/news/windows.jpgMcAfee's popular antivirus software broke down on Wednesday, causing Windows XP computers to have networking problems or repeatedly reboot.
By midday Wednesday, reports began to indicate just how widespread and damaging the McAfee update was.
The University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky., resorted to hand-writing reports, and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails cancelled visitation.
Early reports attributed the widespread problems to a routine McAfee update that caused computers with Microsoft's Service Pack 3 installed to incorrectly identify a legitimate operating system component as containing a virus.
The update effectively confused the PC's immune system, causing it to attack legitimate operating system processes in the same way that some diseases can cause the human immune system to turn inward.
A McAfee representative confirmed the problem to CNET, and said the buggy update code had been removed from the company's servers and that a fixed version would be made available shortly.
"McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false-positive error due to incorrect malware alerts on Wednesday, April 21. The problem occurs with the 5958 virus definition file (DAT) that was released on April 21" at 6 a.m. PT, the company said in a statement.
A report at the Internet Storm Center said the McAfee update registered a false positive and flagged the Windows file svchost.exe as a virus.
The update did not seem to cripple computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7.
Read more at Cnet
By midday Wednesday, reports began to indicate just how widespread and damaging the McAfee update was.
The University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky., resorted to hand-writing reports, and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails cancelled visitation.
Early reports attributed the widespread problems to a routine McAfee update that caused computers with Microsoft's Service Pack 3 installed to incorrectly identify a legitimate operating system component as containing a virus.
The update effectively confused the PC's immune system, causing it to attack legitimate operating system processes in the same way that some diseases can cause the human immune system to turn inward.
A McAfee representative confirmed the problem to CNET, and said the buggy update code had been removed from the company's servers and that a fixed version would be made available shortly.
"McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false-positive error due to incorrect malware alerts on Wednesday, April 21. The problem occurs with the 5958 virus definition file (DAT) that was released on April 21" at 6 a.m. PT, the company said in a statement.
A report at the Internet Storm Center said the McAfee update registered a false positive and flagged the Windows file svchost.exe as a virus.
The update did not seem to cripple computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7.
Read more at Cnet
