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23 Apr 2010
McAfee has apologised to its users about the faulty update file released on Wednesday which caused crashes in Windows XP SP3 systems across the globe.
Barry McPherson, McAfee's executive vice president of support and customer service, said in a blog post late last night that his team had been battling round the clock to fix the problem and to work with affected customers.
"First off, I want to apologise on behalf of McAfee and say that we're extremely sorry for any impact the faulty signature update file may have caused you and your organisations," he wrote.
"We estimate that the majority of the affected systems are back up and running at this time, and more systems are coming back online quickly."
McAfee has published a SuperDAT Remediation Tool to help customers fix affected systems.
"The tool suppresses the driver causing the false positive by applying an Extra.dat file in folder," McPherson explained. "It then restores the 'svchost.exe' Windows file quarantined as a result of the false detection."
McAfee is implementing additional quality assurance protocols for any releases that directly affect critical system files in an effort to prevent similar crashes in the future, according to McPherson.
"We also plan to add capabilities to our cloud-based Artemis system that will provide an additional level of protection against false positives by leveraging an expansive white list of critical system files," he said.
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they need to reimburse people
i found out AFTER i paid 75 dollars for a computer tech to reinstall my windows because of mcafee and i have every intention of removing them as my computer protection system and i have every intention of having them reimburse me for the repair and the cost of the mcafee program i suggest you all do the same and don't take their runaround
Posted by: jennifer98 28 Apr 2010
Don't pay for premium rate Tech Support line
I have just phoned Customer Services who advised me to call the Tech Support line, which I know is charged at £1 per minute. I expressly refused saying that I will not pay £1 per minute for a problem Mcaffee has caused in the first place. Their Tech Support is now phoning me back tomorrow.
Posted by: Lynne 27 Apr 2010
Quality Assurance Process
This kind of situation will unfortunately often occur at least once or twice for security companies. Working in research, I understand how errors can happen. For example, if one member of the team is very tired or under stress from deadlines, it is possible that they will make a mistake ? which can be both costly and dangerous. Today, default security vendors release updates on a daily basis. Users, both consumers and corporate (administrators) typically set the automatic update process to default, meaning that the application will automatically update itself in the background, without requiring any interaction from the user. This means that if there is an error on the released updates, all machines that update automatically will be affected by the error ? creating serious issues and even disasters, for those that involve servers. This is why Quality Assurance Process is a necessary step, which requires correct attention and systematic procedure to avoid issues like this. I am a great supporter of high Quality Assurance Process which should always be implemented before releasing public updates. It is better to delay an update rather than releasing it at the risk of exposing clients and communities. What?s the solution? To enterprise IT administrators: Implement disaster recovery solutions that frequently simulate disasters, allowing for preparation of cases such as this. To consumer users: I always recommend the backup of data and where possible the entire system image ? particularly for users whose machine represents their office. Start backing up sensitive data frequently through a scheduled process. It is better to be ready to handle an incident with two or three operations, rather than lose days of work and personal data. Rossano Ferraris, CA ISBU EMEA Functional Lead, Internet Security Intelligence
Posted by: Rossano Ferraris 27 Apr 2010
McAfee blunder
With no ability to email, I was forced to contact McAfee Technical Services who charge £1 per minute up to the first 20 minutes.Although they knew about the problem caused by them ,their representative was not going to let on and spun out the conversation until £20 had been spent on the call. They then promised to phone back on the following Mon. but no call was received meaning I had to chase them ,again at £1 per minute. Another promise to phone back was given, again without success and after my making yet another call I received the assistance needed to get my computer going. I am still trying to get my money back for these calls and informed them I will not be using their services in future. I bet when the time comes they will debit my credit card with the subscription. What redress do we mere mortals have of fighting these monsters?
Posted by: trevor chitty 26 Apr 2010
Its a bit late
Unfortunatly its a bit late when your computer can not even restart and the only option is to do a full reinstall losing everything done since the last back up. It has taken me 3 full days to get back to where i was when this happened ... Thats 3 days of lost work so will Mcafee pay me for the loss..? I don't think so
Posted by: P Preston 25 Apr 2010