Fergie's Tech Blog

Oops: McAfee Update Exterminates Excel

For a brief period on Friday, McAfee's security tools killed more than viruses.

An error in McAfee's virus definition file released Friday morning caused the company's consumer and enterprise antivirus products to flag Microsoft's Excel, as well as other applications on users' PCs, as a virus called W95/CTX, Joe Telafici, director of operations at McAfee's Avert labs, told CNET News.com.

"At about 1 p.m. PST we started getting reports that people were seeing an unusual number of W95/CTX infections in their environment," Telafici said. "Files that we did identify would probably be deleted or quarantined, depending on your settings."

posted by Fergie @ 3/10/2006 06:59:00 PM