Fighting malware and spam

More updating woes

Another troublesome month for security vendors.

Last month we reported on problems for Kaspersky, Sophos and Microsoft caused by faulty updates. This month it is the turn of McAfee and Symantec (or rather their customers) to suffer updating woes.

In early March, McAfee DAT file 4715 wreaked havoc when it caused several versions of McAfee VirusScan to quarantine or delete numerous widely used application files including Microsoft Excel, Macromedia Flash Player, Adobe Update Manager and the Google Toolbar Installer. McAfee's red-faced developers were quick to notify customers of the error and were able to release a replacement file within two and a half hours.

A few days later, Symantec users found themselves unable to connect to AOL after having received an update. According to Symantec the bug was corrected within seven hours. The company also published a fix for users who continued to have trouble. Of course, for those using AOL to connect to the Internet, downloading a patch from a website was easier said than done. In this instance, Symantec recommended disabling the security software temporarily to retrieve the patch.

01 April 2006

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