McAfee antivirus program goes berserk, freezes PCshttp://www.comcast.net/articles/news-technology/20100421/US.TEC.McAfee.Antivirus.Flaw/Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus.
McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to misidentify a harmless file. It has posted a replacement update for download.
"We are not aware of significant impact on consumers and believe we have effectively limited such occurrence," the company said in a statement.
Online posters begged to differ, saying thousands of computers running Windows XP with Service Pack 3 were rendered useless.