Sweey
22-04-2010, 19:15
Proof - like any was needed - that McAfee is a sack o' sheet.
Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world slowed down or froze after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a threat.
While the problem has now been identified, IT technicians are today having to deal with extra workloads to ensure their systems are protected.
Antivirus vendor McAfee Inc confirmed that yesterday a software update had caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to target a harmless file, leading PCs to repeadedly reboot themselves.
McAfee posted a replacement update and said in a statement: 'We are not aware of significant impact on consumers.'
But, judging by online postings, the number of computers affected was at least in the ten of thousands and possibly in the millions.
The technology news website CNET said that frustrated users vented their anger on Twitter and on IT related mailing lists.
Sonny Hashmi, the deputy chief information officer of the District of Columbia, called it a 'huge disruption', adding that McAfee is now on his 'blacklist', the site reported.
Further employee posts on Twitter showed that one victim of the big freeze was Intel Corp, although the firm did not make an official statement.
The computer problem forced about a third of the hospitals in Rhode Island to postpone elective surgeries and to stop treating patients without traumas in A&E.
In Kentucky, state police were told to shut down the computers in their patrol cars as technicians tried to fix the problem. The National Science Foundation headquarters in Virginia also lost computer access.
It's not uncommon for antivirus programs to misidentify legitimate files as viruses. Last month, antivirus software from Bitdefender locked up PCs running several different versions of Windows.
But Mike Rothman, president of computer security firm Securosis, said the scale of this outage was unusual, adding: 'It looks to be a train wreck.'
McAfee said the problem was confined to corporate customers, as consumer versions of its software seemed to be unaffected.
Peter Juvinall, systems administrator at Illinois State University, said that when the first computer started rebooting it quickly became evident that it was a major problem, affecting dozens of computers at the College of Business alone.
'I originally thought it was a virus,' he said. When the tech support people concluded McAfee's update was to blame, they stopped further downloads of the faulty software update and started shuttling from computer to computer to get the machines working again.
In many offices around the world, personal attention to each PC from a technician appeared to be the only way to fix the problem.
The recovery was slowed by the fact that PCs caught in a reboot cycle are not receptive to remote software updates.
Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1267950/McAfee-antivirus-program-fault-causes-millions-PCs-shut-down.html)
I spent four hours at work sorting out just 7 machines and had to defer another 20-odd because of the time it was taking me. Two of those 7 cannot be sorted and need to be reformatted.
Fuck off Mac cunts, your time is coming and I'll laugh at your infestation. Try getting some decent market share first though eh?
Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world slowed down or froze after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a threat.
While the problem has now been identified, IT technicians are today having to deal with extra workloads to ensure their systems are protected.
Antivirus vendor McAfee Inc confirmed that yesterday a software update had caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to target a harmless file, leading PCs to repeadedly reboot themselves.
McAfee posted a replacement update and said in a statement: 'We are not aware of significant impact on consumers.'
But, judging by online postings, the number of computers affected was at least in the ten of thousands and possibly in the millions.
The technology news website CNET said that frustrated users vented their anger on Twitter and on IT related mailing lists.
Sonny Hashmi, the deputy chief information officer of the District of Columbia, called it a 'huge disruption', adding that McAfee is now on his 'blacklist', the site reported.
Further employee posts on Twitter showed that one victim of the big freeze was Intel Corp, although the firm did not make an official statement.
The computer problem forced about a third of the hospitals in Rhode Island to postpone elective surgeries and to stop treating patients without traumas in A&E.
In Kentucky, state police were told to shut down the computers in their patrol cars as technicians tried to fix the problem. The National Science Foundation headquarters in Virginia also lost computer access.
It's not uncommon for antivirus programs to misidentify legitimate files as viruses. Last month, antivirus software from Bitdefender locked up PCs running several different versions of Windows.
But Mike Rothman, president of computer security firm Securosis, said the scale of this outage was unusual, adding: 'It looks to be a train wreck.'
McAfee said the problem was confined to corporate customers, as consumer versions of its software seemed to be unaffected.
Peter Juvinall, systems administrator at Illinois State University, said that when the first computer started rebooting it quickly became evident that it was a major problem, affecting dozens of computers at the College of Business alone.
'I originally thought it was a virus,' he said. When the tech support people concluded McAfee's update was to blame, they stopped further downloads of the faulty software update and started shuttling from computer to computer to get the machines working again.
In many offices around the world, personal attention to each PC from a technician appeared to be the only way to fix the problem.
The recovery was slowed by the fact that PCs caught in a reboot cycle are not receptive to remote software updates.
Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1267950/McAfee-antivirus-program-fault-causes-millions-PCs-shut-down.html)
I spent four hours at work sorting out just 7 machines and had to defer another 20-odd because of the time it was taking me. Two of those 7 cannot be sorted and need to be reformatted.
Fuck off Mac cunts, your time is coming and I'll laugh at your infestation. Try getting some decent market share first though eh?