Botched McAfee update shutting down corporate XP machines worldwide
By Nilay Patel 
posted Apr 21st 2010 1:47PM
posted Apr 21st 2010 1:47PM
Update: McAfee just sent us a statement -- they've pulled the update from their corporate download servers, and consumers shouldn't be affected.
Ouch -- that might be the understatement of the year. We've definitely hearing this affects SP2 as well, we'll keep looking for more.McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to incorrect malware alerts on Wednesday, April 21. The problem occurs with the 5958 virus definition file (DAT) that was released on April 21 at 2.00 PM GMT+1 (6am Pacific Time).
Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant performance issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The faulty update has been removed from McAfee download servers for corporate users, preventing any further impact on those customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumer customers and believe we have effectively limited such occurrence.
McAfee teams are working with the highest priority to support impacted customers and plan to provide an update virus definition file shortly. McAfee apologizes for any inconvenience to our customers
Update 2: The anecdotal numbers keep rolling in, and they're not small -- 30,000 machines are knocked out here, 60,000 there. Given that the only fixes right now involve techs spending time with each affected machine individually, things could get seriously messy. We'll keep you updated if you keep us updated, okay?
Update 3: Here's an official McAfee fix, although like we said, it requires tech to hit each machine in person. We'll see what the story is for bigger institutions with tens of thousands of seats.
Update 4: We're told the official fix only helps those who haven't been hit with the bug yet, so there's obviously still issues to be sorted out. [Thanks, Tyler.]
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Developing...
At last, my revenge is complete
@Lord Vader
Stop taking the credit. It was MS who paid McAfee to take out those XP running machines! ;)
@Lord Vader
+1
Every one knows Mcafee and Norton are both viruses
@who said what and who do you think invented viruses?
@Lord Vader
scratchfury: #mcafee fix: boot to safe mode, rename mcshield.exe, reboot, run Virus Console, pick Tools -> Rollback DAT, name back to mcshield, reboot
@Lord Vader
Still pissed about the BSOD you got in your visor while walking through the woods on Endor? Yeah had to suck finally getting back online and seeing those Ewoks posing you in various pictures as their bitch. Then they showed up on Spacebook....
@kobachi
Since you're replying to "who said what" the beginning of your post starts out "who said what and who..." and confused me for a few seconds.
holy shit it's an upd...
@Engadget Photoshop WIN
@who said what Ohhh... I hope tomorrow at work my machine behaves the same way :D
One day paid for doing nothing.. Cha-ching!
@Lord Vader OMG, you killed computers!
...As long as it ain't mine
Nightly news at 10:
"Our top headline tonight; over 10,000 IT personnel quit their jobs today..."
@admlshake You sir are full of win!
@Lord Vader
I think you mean MY revenge is complete. Minion.
@Lord Vader
Just curious- Lord Vader, are you Darth Vader, or his brother Chad? If this is Chad, I love what you've done to the produce section.
@Lord Vader I love my mac even more.
Intel sites all over the world are affected. Intel is just starting to roll out Win 7, so almost the entire company uses XP. They just sent me home for the day...
@N900
I had to scroll up and take a close look to realise. That's class, and subtle. =]
Microsoft's Response:
Maybe you should've updated to Vista when we told you to, motherfuckers.
@Lord Vader
Fuck I bet over at EA South they are freaking the fuck out. Glad I'm off today to not witness this shitstorm.
@who said what Actually it was Apple trying to level the playing field for their 20,000+ KNOWN viruses and 20 day zero day attacks and the lack of Multitasking on the iphone.....While Steve Jobs tried his Jedi Mind trick on a audience telling them that they don't need Multitasking only to release it on the iphone. I think Apple is one confused company....They just want your money,.
@everyone,
If this wasn't a good enough reason for anyone still running McAfee (and I'm looking at you, Texas Tech U), well then, bend over and take it like a beeyotch.
@Madcat Any IT person who's insane enough to run McAfee probably doesn't deserve to have a job. Even a fairly bloated Symantec anti-virus app can't compete with McAfee's sheer awfulness-I mean normally it just ruins your machine by making it run like utter crap but I guess McAfee finally decided to just cut to the chase and nuke your machine once and for all.
@mr88 me too.
@Lord Vader
Yuup, the majority of my school is down (University of Oregon).
@Lord Vader
@engadget, clever box image!
@Lord Vader This has knocked out the entire hardin county school district in KY
@Madcat
why would they quit with the economy like this. all these viruses are big money to them i wouldn't be surprised if a report came in that IT's made some sort of virus. Even so there are hundreds of IT's to take there positions.
@Dsi2play I was sitting in the CSIS office of my university when this hit and the IT guys were rushing around ripping ethernet cords out. I sat there with Ubuntu and enjoyed the fact that I forgot drainware like McAfee existed.
MCAFEE is fucking FAIL, it confirms what we've known all along, they don't test their stuff.
They just acquired my favorite antispam company too, MXLOGIC, and ever since they took over things went to hell, one outage after the next, cant even login to the portal that worked fine for 7 years until McAfee just HAD to acquire a solid company and turn it to shit.
whoever runs McAfee should eat a bullet.
@Mister Warmth
I agree with you 100%. It reminds me of AOL. Remember the time when everywhere you look, there's an AOL disk. It's like junk mail. Then, AOL started to collapse because of poor management and crappy products. That's what going to happen with McAfee. They sneak their software in anyway they can and they make it impossible to uninstall it. When a company resort to that kind of sleazy tactics, you know it's a crappy product.
@michaelpeerman and shawnee mission school district in kansas
@agroupofletters
That update seems to have knocked out THEIR OWN SERVERS!
Did they not test it...?
@Lord Vader
When you think about it, the Internet is just one big huge virus!
It may be too late, but I'd like to clarify something for all the commenters:
1. This only affects McAfee Corporate Edition. Home Users are unaffected (though they are still punished for being McAfee customers to begin with).
2. In the corporate world, AVG and Avast just won't fly. It's the sad truth, but the truth. It's pretty much either McAfee or Symantec (Norton). If you work in a corporate IT department and try to suggest they switch to AVG, Avast or Kapersky (or switch to Macs) you will get fired.
3. The sadder truth to comment #2, is that many of the affected businesses will still continue to use McAfee, though many will likely switch to Symantec CE. None will be switching to AVG, Avast, Kapersky, etc.
Not that another voice needs to be added to the chorus, but... F--KING McAfee, man. Good effing grief! I hope that affected companies all sue for compensation and put them out of business.
@Old fogie late bloomer I am NOT coming to McAfee's defense but something MUST be said about the net admins that didn't test the update on a closed network first. ESPECIALLY when dealing with critical systems like Hospitals? Come on.
So much for going cheap and hiring High School graduates!
Always hated McAfee and always will
@Bskballa92
Nod32 FTW!
@Bskballa92
Perhaps its time to switch to a Mac?
just saying...
@AppleDrank
Perhaps it's time to switch to a modern AntiVirus.
@Dafrety Avast, ye virus scum!
@Bskballa92
Hater!
@Bskballa92
Just another reason to stick with Security Essentials.... I hated McAfee too, Firewall never worked right. Always screwed up eBay.
@Bskballa92
agreed 100%, anytime i see a friends computer with Mcafee on it i cringe, and immediately remove it and install AVG or Avast
@Dafrety We just switched the bulk of our users to Trend last week, so WHEW! (we did still have 5-6 people on McAfee, so count those systems hosed)
@Bskballa92 McAfee and Norton makes Flash look like a good memory and CPU citizen.
@N900 I use Avast on my Windows system and it works great!
@Jaylittles531 NOD is no better. AVAST FTW!!!
@Jaylittles531 Sorry mate misread it with NOD antivirus.
My bad. http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Security_Essentials