Subscribe

Security software kills PCs

By Nadine Arendse
Johannesburg, 18 Jul 2012

Security software kills PCs

Symantec has apologised after an update to its security software sparked repeated crashes on enterprise Windows XP machines, Channel Register reports.

The anti-virus giant withdrew the misfiring definition update, issued on 11 July, hours after problems first appeared, releasing a revised update the next day. No new issues have been reported since this signature rollback was applied.

Deccan Herald says the company knows so far of about 300 corporate customers that have been affected, and about 60 consumer customers.

Customers reported it took Symantec hours to identify and fix the bug and that they needed to fix computers broken by the tainted update on their own.

Symantec blamed the glitch on software compatibility issues that arose after an update was released last Wednesday. PCs could be fixed if customers manually removed the software from each disabled computer, it said in an advisory.

Share