Updating niggles

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Mar 1, 2006

Troublesome month for security vendors

Last month proved to be troublesome for security vendors Sophos, Microsoft and Kaspersky, as niggles with updates caused problems for their customers.

Sophos customers suffered an onslaught of false positives thanks to a fault in the update file which was released to add detection of the OSX-Inqtana-B worm for Mac OS X. The fault resulted in Sophos Anti-Virus generating false alerts on a number of files in Microsoft Office 2004 and Adobe Acrobat Reader. A revised update was released shortly after developers spotted the problem, alongside an apology to customers.

Meanwhile, many of the users of Microsoft's Antigen email security product were left without fully functional email systems for several hours after they received a faulty update to the Kaspersky scanning engine. The Antigen product - which Microsoft inherited when it acquired email security firm Sybari last year - uses a number of different scanning engines including Kaspersky's to provide anti-virus protection. A Microsoft spokesperson explained: 'As soon as we were aware that our customers were experiencing email problems due to the Kaspersky update, we escalated through the appropriate channels across Kaspersky and Microsoft and were able to define, test and provide a resolution.'

Indeed, Microsoft did not have an easy month at all with its security products - just days before the problems with Antigen, an update to Windows AntiSpyware beta 1 caused it to misidentify Symantec security tools as password-stealing malicious software. On detection of certain registry keys set by the Symantec products, Windows AntiSpyware generated an alert and prompted the user to delete the keys. Users who went ahead and deleted the keys would have found that Symantec AntiVirus and Symantec Client Security software stopped functioning correctly.

Fortunately for the two companies, only a small number of customers are thought to have been affected by this error, due to the fact that the misidentification applied only to Symantec's enterprise products.

Posted on 01 March 2006 by Virus Bulletin

 Tags

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

VBSpam tests to be executed under the AMTSO framework

VB is excited to announce that, starting from the Q3 test, all VBSpam tests of email security products will be executed under the AMTSO framework.

In memoriam: Prof. Ross Anderson

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of Professor Ross Anderson a few days ago.

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.