Thread: McAfee Update = Crashed Computers?

An update to the popular proprietary anti-virus giant, McAfee caused chaos as a buggy update released on Wednesday by the company caused 'tens of thousands' of computers running Windows XP to crash down. The update caused the software to attack a vital component of the pretty old Microsoft Windows Operating System (which is still widely used by many, even after the release of Windows Vista and Windows 7).

The damage was widespread, as reported by CNET News:

The damage was widespread: The University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky., resorted to hand-writing reports and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails cancelled visitation, and Rhode Island hospitals turned away non-trauma patients at emergency rooms and postponed some elective surgeries.

Trusted sources said that all of the Intel's computers in the United States (running McAfee), also ended up being affected by the buggy update. But it was not clear as to how much level the damage had gone.

The bug majorly affected the computers which were running Windows XP Service Pack 3. Eventhough McAfee apologized for the problems caused by their buggy update, it didn't quite accept completely the damages caused by the update which was released at 6 a.m. PT.

It was a false positive by the McAfee (which flagged the essential Windows process svchost.exe as a virus) which caused all the problem.

The detailed instructions on how to fix the crashing computers was later published by McAfee. It can be accessed at:
McAfee KnowledgeBase - False positive detection of W32/Wecorl.a in 5958 DAT

This incident has made it clear that using 'paid security suites' doesn't make any big difference, other than that you have to pay some bucks for these. They also doesn't (and cannot) ensure complete safety of your computer.