McAfee Kills XP

[Malcolm]

McAfee a security software company is reported to have sent a bad virus definition to its users, causing thousands of PCs running Windows XP Service Pack 3 , to crash.

The 'bad' update is 5958 virus definition file, released on Wednesday. The update is said to have mis-classified a critical Windows XP system file as a malicious program. Affected PCs enter a reboot loop and lose all network access.

Steve Shillingford, chief executive of tech forensics firm Solera Networks, told USA Today that one large U.S. multinational company saw 50,000 PCs go into a reboot frenzy as a result of the destructive update. Solera was in the process of helping the client clean up the mess, which could only be corrected manually by a technician at each PC.

"I want to apologise on behalf of McAfee and say that we're extremely sorry for any impact the faulty signature update file may have caused you and your organisations," said Barry McPherson executive vice-president of tech support at McAfee in a blog post.

[hobwebs]

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened with McAfee. You honestly couldn't pay me to put that on my computer/s. Well...depends how much you're paying of course...

[Malcolm]

I wonder if McAfee are going to compensate the company who "saw 50,000 PCs go into a reboot frenzy" with an hour of two of tech support time for each PC!

[Malcolm]

According to web reports a 'Twitter Storm' erupted over this incident, one McAfee affected Windows XP user dubbed the incident "Mcaffocalypse".

It seems incredible that McAfee released this 'fix' without any proper testing!

[casioman]

Never liked this A/V software mind you not so sure about any of them these days