McAfee false-positive glitch fells PCs worldwide

theregister.co.uk ^

[Gomez]

IT admins across the globe are letting out a collective groan after servers and PCs running McAfee VirusScan attacked core system files, in some cases causing the machines to display the dreaded blue screen of death.

Details are still coming in, but forums here and here show that it's affecting McAfee customers in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. A UK-based Reg reader, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized by his employer to speak to the press, said the glitch simultaneously leveled half of a customer's 140 machines after they updated the latest virus signature file.

"Literally half of the machines were down with this McAfee anti-virus message IDing valid programs as having this trojan," the IT consultant said. "Literally half the office switched off their PCs and were just twiddling their thumbs."

When the consultant returned to his office he was relieved that his own laptop, which also uses VirusScan, was working normally. Then, suddenly, when it installed the latest McAfee DAT file, his computer was also smitten. The anti-virus program identified winvnc.exe and several other legitimate files as malware and attempted to quarantine them. With several core system files out of commission, the machine was rendered an expensive paperweight.

[The Cajun]

It's amazing to me all the trouble people here have with their OS and anti-virus programs. I'm running XP Pro on a Gateway G6 400 MHz Pentium II computer (built in 1998). Running McAfee Total Protection 2009, NO PROBLEMS!
Never had any problems to speak of with XP, never had any problems to speak of with McAfee.

[G Larry]

Fortunately, my brother is a former “Geek Squad” techi, and advised me to ditch the burdensome ap, largely because it’s a performance hog, running 17 aps at a time.
So this machine has never seen McAfee

[WackySam]

Fortunately, my brother is a former “Geek Squad” techi, and advised me to ditch the burdensome ap, largely because it’s a performance hog, running 17 aps at a time. So this machine has never seen McAfee

Take a look at NOD32.

[lilylangtree]

Yeow!

[Wooly]

McAfee ans Symantec (Norton) are the two most worthless app out there. Symantec is just a collection of out of date programs that they bought from someone else and put their name on it. Symantec slows a machine to a crawl.
Since Symantec bought Norton, I do not know why IT groups still use this piece of junk.

[radiohead]

I think I had some variant of that April 1 worm back in Dec & Jan (yes, twice). Although I had to deal a rep in India, my problem was fixed remotely. It was deep and vicious and even with the McAfee plan, still cost me money, but I can’t complain about the work they did.

I only found out recently that my university gives us Norton for free. I put it on my laptops, but once my McAfee subscription runs out, I might should change to Norton.

[Windflier]

How long ago? I use AVG Free and had a major malfunction about 6 months ago.

Hmm... my troubles were possibly around that same time frame.

At the time, I looked everywhere on the net for answers, and what came out, was that lots of others were having the same issue at that time.

It all started with a new update that was automatically downloading to people's computers. Normally, that's not a problem, but the new version of AVG Free (8.0 I think?) was wrecking computers all over the place.

Weird thing is that not every computer reacted to the new version the same way. Some weren't affected at all, like my wife's.

In my case, it caused my computer to continuously boot up, over and over again. It never got to the desktop, but would start over when it opened up the Win XP welcome screen.

I subsequently learned that AVG was bought by another company, and the the troublesome release came out on their watch.

There was quite a bit written about all this at the time. I'm sure that you can still find lots of posting traffic about it on computer forums.

[Lancey Howard]

I’ve never had a problem with McAfee. In fact, it’s nailed a few bad guys for me from time to time. I don’t enable automatic updates - - I just update manually once or twice a week. Only takes a couple of minutes.

[JoeProBono]

[Windflier]

Symantec slows a machine to a crawl.

Tell me about it. I ditched Norton on the good advice of a tech-savvy friend, and have never looked back.

The same good friend encouraged me to ditch IE for Firefox. Another GREAT call. That was over five years ago, now.

[Windflier]

...once my McAfee subscription runs out, I might should change to Norton.

Abort! - abort! - abort!

Do not go there. You'll be sorry.

There are plenty of very good anti-virus programs that won't bog down your computer by hogging all the resources like Norton will.

[Windflier]

See post #29. Avira anti-virus. I use it. It’s good. It’s free.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Oh, how I hate McAfee. The geniuses in my employer’s IT department settled on McAfee for some unknown reason, and it’s made the PCs in our development group almost unusable. CPU and memory usage spike to 100% on a regular basis, completely freezing up the machines and crashing running programs. The culprit is always some process from the McAfee security suite. Disabling McAfee is out of the question since IT instantly complains. Combine McAfee with a lousy IT department and you have the ingredients for disaster.

[TChad]

Symantec slows a machine to a crawl.

That was certainly true of NAV and related products after the 2003 versions until recently, but Norton Internet Security 2009 is not a resource hog. That's hard to believe, I know, but it's true. I was surprised to find myself liking a Symantec program again, after so many years.

[Dallas59]

AVG, Malwarebytes, Super SpyWare Terminator, Combo Fix, among others.

[HangThemHigh]

My wife got a rootkit virus Thursday. AVG, SuperAntiSpyware, nor Avast touched it. Avast was even reporting its own files as infected.

I downloaded McAfee free from ComCast and it was able to remove the virus. I still spent the better part of a day getting the computer running correctly again.

I don’t like anti-virus and other resource hogging programs, but the wife hasn’t complained about slowness with McAfee installed (and believe me she wouldn’t hesitate to complain if it bothered her). And her machine is not very fast to begin with.

I am working at a high security site and they are using Symantec. The operation of the anti-virus there is nearly totally transparent to the user, I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any slowness other than the machines are slow to boot (and that is likely the fault of the several scripts they run in the name of security).

[radiohead]

Thanks. : ) I have Norton on 2 computers now and haven’t noticed any slowdown, but the computers are a laptop and mini that don’t have much other than Office on them, unlike my desktop. I wonder if it makes any difference what other programs you have on them in terms of seeing a slow down.

One thing that our computer prof suggest I install is NoScript and Adblock. I go to a lot of unknown, maybe risky sites while doing research or looking for videos for my classes. The NoScript stops java script and kinda saves me from myself when going to unkown sites that might have malicious scripts.

[hiredhand]

IF Microsoft didn't have such deep pockets for marketing their shitty products, the AV industry simply wouldn't exist... at least not to the degree that it does now.

I use the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) screen saver set on my main Linux box at the house. It's funny to watch people who are over visiting who see it go into screen saver mode. :-) They'll start telling me about all the grief they're currently having with Windows and how the system crashes at very inopportune moments, and how after a couple years you simply have to reload the OS, and how the registry gets "fat". The screen saver always starts with the Windows NT BSOD, so it's familiar to them. But it only stays there for a couple of minutes. Then it switches to various other crash screens from Sun-OS, Solaris, AIX, Mac, DOS... and then they wonder what's going on with my PC! I just tell them that it's a Linux system and that IF it crashes then something very wrong indeed has occurred! As for AV, there really aren't viruses "per-se" for Linux. The truth is that there ARE viruses for Linux. But with a zillion people who have access to source code and the large base of developers for Linux, it's a lot more difficult to design something effective before somebody catches it and obviates it via an improvement. MS has a very small development staff (relatively speeking) and nobody knows what in the hell their vile little OS does under the covers. :-) I've had to program in both environments (Windows and UNIX), and programming on a Windows system is like doing heart surgery on somebody through their butt! You're pretty much STUCK with the APIs for whichever language you want to use and if you ever want to find out WHY some very detailed function is providing strange results, you simply can't do this with Windows. Not so with an OS where the source code is available! Not only that, remote exploits on user-only-machines are pretty boring. Quite a contrast from Win-XP where everybody on the planet promptly makes their own account equal to "administrator".

I'm not complaining though... part of my AOR at work involves threat assessment including current virus threats. I've told them too many times to count that they should dimply ditch Windows. We intercept 300 viruses on the web alone each 30 days, and 1500 via e-mail...none of which would affect a Linux system or a Mac. :-)

You can probably relate to this since you run both OSs as I do... but I think of my work Windows system as a "toilet"....which gets flushed when it's full of stinky stuff. :-) There's nothing important on it, and I don't depend on it for any of my critical functions. It's got applications on it only...which can be reloaded in a very short time. But my Linux systems don't let me down...so far! I store the actual data ON my Linux systems! :-)

UCS is based on Linux! :-)

[Squantos]

Same here. Ubuntu 9.04 was installed on an old laptop yesterday an it is even better than before. It is cleaner faster an works better with dvix for feeding video to our TV. Way more better !!!

[hiredhand]

I’m envious! I couldn’t get good Nvidia support with Ubuntu 9.x with my video card. Debian 5 is working WELL...the latest Nvidia driver works GREAT! I’ve got a minor problem with X-Windows widget sets, but that’s a small thing and I’ll get it fixed soon. :-)