McAfee antivirus program goes berserk, freezes PCs
By PETER SVENSSON

NEW YORK – Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus.

McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to misidentify a harmless file. It has posted a replacement update for download.

McAfee could not say how many computers were affected, but judging by online postings, the number was at least in the thousands and possibly in the hundreds of thousands.

McAfee said it did not appear that consumer versions of its software caused similar problems. It is investigating how the error happened "and will take measures" to prevent it from recurring, the company said in a statement.

The computer problem forced about a third of the hospitals in Rhode Island to postpone elective surgeries and stop treating patients without traumas in emergency rooms, said Nancy Jean, a spokeswoman for the Lifespan system of hospitals. The system includes Rhode Island Hospital, the state's largest, and Newport Hospital. Jean said patients who required treatment for gunshot wounds, car accidents, blunt trauma and other potentially fatal injuries were still being admitted to the emergency rooms.

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 Arlington, Va., also lost computer access.

Intel Corp. appeared to be among the victims, according to employee posts on Twitter. Intel did not immediately return calls for comment.

Peter Juvinall, systems administrator at Illinois State University in Normal, 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, personal attention to each PC from a technician appeared to be the only way to fix the problem because the computers weren't receptive to remote software updates when stuck in the reboot cycle. That slowed the recovery.

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.

However, the scale of this outage was unusual, said Mike Rothman, president of computer security firm Securosis.

"It looks to be a train wreck," Rothman said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100421/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_mcafee_antivirus_flaw

One good reason to avoid using a M$ operating system.

Yep, sure sounds like a Socialist gov't conspiracy dreamed up by the Obama Administration to me. Probably to keep the Tea Party from gaining new members, too!


-Kerry O., I don't need to give my computer the Vulcan nerve pinch all the time 'cuz mine doesn't do M$ :)

And I thought sure u would find a way to throw in some blame for this to Bush....u r slipping..

OOPS wrong thread

Makes y' wonder why people just don't do the smart thing and use a Mac ... well, no, now that I think about that, I don't wonder ... I just use my Mac and enjoy the freedom ...

good thing I got rid of mcafee...

No, because I'd bet Bush had one of those 'computers' that needed to be turned upside down and shaken to erase the screen. :)

Besides, he was on vacation nearly all the time and wouldn't have had the time even if he had the knowledge.

-Kerry O.

Well, u shot yourself in the foot with that one....at least etch a sketch work is ones on work but Obama's teleprompters r programed by someone else.