McAfee Update Sends PCs Cuckoo

McAfee has been forced into rushing out a fix for users of its products, after an update stopped some businesses and individuals accessing the Internet.

The McAfee update, issued over the weekend, also caused McAfee SecurityCenter console to fail, but the Intel-owned security giant said it was working with customers to fix the problem.

Affected products include its consumer software and McAfee VirusScan Enterprise. The company advised consumers to uninstall McAfee Antivirus, reboot their computers and reinstall the product from McAfee’s home page.

“We are reaching out to our enterprise customers to ensure that they install the latest update (DAT 6809 or higher),” the security firm said. “We have just issued a mandatory security hotfix to ensure the ongoing efficacy of their security systems.  Enterprises can go to the McAfee KnowledgeBase (https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB76004) for instructions on how to do this.”

McAfee said it was unsure how many customers were affected.

AV fails

The issues come just over a month after rival Symantec had similar problems. An update to its Endpoint Protection 12.1 and Norton antivirus software for business products crashed PCs and left users to suffer the infamous “blue screen of death (BSOD)”. The flaw only affected those running Windows XP, whereas in the case of McAfee all versions from Windows XP onwards were impacted.

Such gaffes won’t do much to burnish the reputation of the anti-virus industry, which has been taking a bashing over recent times for not blocking enough threats.

When TechWeekEurope caught up with building materials supplier Travis Perkins, it revealed it may one day consider ditching AV one day, having found that many vendors in the market were claiming to protect customers from zero-day threats when they were not.

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