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McAfee Update Sends Windows XP Machines into Reboot Loop
McAfee perfectly illustrated today why you're supposed to thoroughly test software updates before pushing them out to the general public. Consumers and IT support personnel around the country found themselves in a nightmare situation this afternoon; at best, their Windows XP-based machines simply couldn't connect to a network, but more often than not were stuck in an endless loop of reboots.The update, labeled 5958, causes McAfee to misidentify svchost.exe (an essential Windows system file) as a piece of malware and delete it. The official statement from McAfee indicates that the flaw only effects Windows XP machines with SP3, and results in "moderate to significant performance issues." Of course, reports from around the Web indicate this affects systems that are only up to SP2. And calling an endless cycle of reboots a "performance issue" is a bit of an understatement.
There are unconfirmed reports that the flaw has taken out banks of systems at Intel and Dish Network, and the New York Times is reporting that dozens of PCs at the Illinois State University in Normal were taken out as well.
McAfee has released a "fix" for the problem that really only suppresses the issue and doesn't directly address the false-positive issue. The fix also requires that a technician individually visit and repair any affected system, meaning that it may be a long night for support staff at companies and institutions who turn to McAfee for their virus protection.
The failure to properly test the update has not brought any major corporation to its knees, but it might very well cost McAfee a few customers. [From: Engadget and New York Times]
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Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsjavierApr 22nd 2010 8:33AM
Really easy to fix, don't panic
bastion78Apr 22nd 2010 9:39AM
Yeah, do not use crapware like mcafee
GAKApr 22nd 2010 1:38PM
So, my boss was in a panic and nothing happened. Apparently nothing happened to 99.5% of McAfee users. Does anyone think for even a minute that maybe the svchost.exe actually WAS infected? If I were a hacker, what better way to consolidate data harvesting than by the executable that fires off most network communications services. IBM, Dish Network, I'm sure there are other high profile Fortune 100 companies that probably had problems. Coincidence, or just bad Chinese hacker code?