Fighting malware and spam

McAfee false positive flags Vista component

Innocent file labelled trojan.

McAfee has updated one of its detections after a faulty update led to an integral component of the Windows Vista operating system being falsely flagged as a trojan horse.

The innocent file, the Windows console input method editor executable conime.exe, was alerted on as a password-stealing trojan for online gaming software thanks to an error in the identification routine, which has since been fixed by the released of an updated 'DAT' definition file.

No details have been released on how many customers were affected by the issue. Comment can be found at The Register here, with details of the faulty update at McAfee here.

22 October 2008

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2 comments

Yesterday I got messages and alerts from my PC in regards to this mislabeled "trojan" after initiating a manual scan. I have Vista loaded as my OS on my PC but McAfee has not emailed me or sent a message confirming this story. I am concerned nonetheless.

by X. M., 23 October 2008, 13:44

McAfee also identified and stripped a game executable, Jane's Hotel. When my girlfriend tried to restore it from quarrantine, McAfee killed it off and she cannot reinstall the game now because of McAfee.

by Ron M, 23 December 2008, 16:27

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