McAfee's popular antivirus software failed spectacularly on Wednesday, causing tens of thousands of Windows XP computers to crash or repeatedly reboot.
A buggy update that the company released early in the day turned the software's formidable defenses against malicious software inward, prompting it to attack a vital component of Microsoft Windows. The update was available for business customers for about four hours before distribution was halted, McAfee said.
The damage was widespread: the University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky., resorted to hand-writing reports and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails canceled visitation, and Rhode Island hospitals turned away non-trauma patients at emergency rooms and postponed some elective surgeries.
More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20003074-83.html
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A buggy update that the company released early in the day turned the software's formidable defenses against malicious software inward, prompting it to attack a vital component of Microsoft Windows. The update was available for business customers for about four hours before distribution was halted, McAfee said.
The damage was widespread: the University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky., resorted to hand-writing reports and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails canceled visitation, and Rhode Island hospitals turned away non-trauma patients at emergency rooms and postponed some elective surgeries.
More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20003074-83.html
