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Print 33 comment(s) - last by fsardis.. on Apr 28 at 2:24 PM
McAfee looks to make things right after last weeks blunder

Last week, we reported about a routine McAfee software update that went awry. The 5958 DAT update nuked svchost.exe on machines running Windows XP Service Pack 3. As a result, many machines either shutdown or were sent into infinite reboots.

The day of the incident, McAfee said, "Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant performance issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3." It contented, "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."

According to McAfee, a "small percentage" of its customers are still having problems after the botched update from last week and it is working to help restore those customers' machines. McAfee is providing its toll free support number to provide technical assistance with those still having problems. If tech support can't resolve the issue, McAfee directs users to download a patch from the internet or it will express deliver a free CD that should bring your system back to normalcy.

But that's not all, McAfee is also looking to make things right with customers with a bit of compensation:

For impacted home or home office customers who have incurred costs to repair PCs as a result of the security update issue, McAfee will reimburse reasonable expenses, such as a visit to a local tech support specialist... Additionally, because we value our loyal customers, home or home office users whose PCs were rendered inoperable or severely impaired as a result of the security update will receive a free two-year extension of their current McAfee subscription product at no charge. This extension will appear in the “My Account” section of the McAfee Web site within the next 30 days.

While it's true that McAfee seriously screwed up with the virus definition update, at least the company is owning up to its mistake and providing compensation for its customers.

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lol
By Spivonious on 4/27/2010 12:36:27 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
moderate to significant performance issues


Yeah, I guess being unable to boot is moderate to significant.




RE: lol
By jonmcc33 on 4/27/2010 8:34:50 PM , Rating: 5
Significant performance issues happen just by using the McAfee product anyway. :-\


They have to
By dani31 on 4/27/2010 1:12:00 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
at least the company is owning up to its mistake and providing compensation for its customers


It's not like they have much option. Their paid product needs to compete against an increasing number of free, arguably more stable products such as Microsoft's.




RE: They have to
By AnnihilatorX on 4/27/2010 4:55:03 PM , Rating: 3
Avast, AVG provide quite good free products as well.


RE: They have to
By jonmcc33 on 4/27/2010 8:35:15 PM , Rating: 1
I wouldn't include AVG on there. That's a horrible free solution.


RE: They have to
By AstroGuardian on 4/28/2010 3:05:57 AM , Rating: 2
Thumbs up!AVG free sucks donkey b@lls. When i switched to Avast! Free i got rid of the virus problems


True Story
By Smilin on 4/27/2010 3:25:32 PM , Rating: 4
My father in law has an older laptop. When he started getting the reboot loop from this he thought his computer had died. Due to the age he figured repairs would not be worth it and bought a new one.

So is McAfee going to compensate him for this?

Yeah whatever. This blows up ANY XPsp3 machine so that tells me they never tested it on a single one. Fvck Mcafee.




RE: True Story
By AstroGuardian on 4/28/2010 3:09:26 AM , Rating: 1
Or it might just be deliberately created to kill any remaining XP machines running happily for ages... Correction...WERE running happily


Still a major issue...
By jemix on 4/27/2010 12:48:10 PM , Rating: 2
I'm a PC Tech at a major corporation. Not only is the direct costs very expensive, but the impact this has caused in the delay to address other IT issues is huge.




By sapiens74 on 4/27/2010 1:10:00 PM , Rating: 1
Not sure what is more hilarious, that you combine a 10year old OS on a new computer, or McAfee AV or Dell customer service....

No wonder netbooks are so popular




By retrospooty on 4/27/2010 2:09:39 PM , Rating: 1
Millions of PC's out there are bloated by McAfee and Norton's total disregard for their customers Windows installations.




Why not Norton?
By BACH on 4/28/10, Rating: 0
That's the Price of running Windows
By sapiens74 on 4/27/10, Rating: -1
By invidious on 4/27/2010 12:57:42 PM , Rating: 5
Nope.


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By fsardis on 4/27/2010 12:59:18 PM , Rating: 5
Corporations never run on Apple stuff for very good reasons.
Last I checked, Apple itself does not trust "the most advance OS in the world" to run its own web servers apart from the .com domain. And if it wasn't for marketing reasons, they wouldn't be running that on their servers either.


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By sapiens74 on 4/27/10, Rating: -1
RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By fsardis on 4/27/2010 2:18:47 PM , Rating: 5
if you are responsible for an company's infrastructure running Windows servers and you are having security incidents then clearly you don't know how to configure security. Unless of course you are talking about things like DDoS in which case it is something totally unrelated to what the victim is running. But if you are having virus incidents within the company, I suggest you quit your job and find another career because it is not Microsoft's fault that you are incompetent of securing your servers and the network traffic.

A good firewall, plus a properly configured proxy server and some web filtering software can go a very long way. In all my years at work in various companies, managing Windows networks, I have never had a virus make it to a client machine. Infected attachments get stopped right at the Exchange server and any malicious websites are blocked from web filtering software. Prevention if far better than cure and a bit of extra time spent at properly configuring your infrastructure can save lots of tears and stress in the future.

If you are thinking you are going to run a company on macs and that it will save you time from configuring security or worrying about security altogether, then as Mr T would say, "I pity you, fool"


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By sapiens74 on 4/27/10, Rating: 0
By Samus on 4/27/2010 6:14:47 PM , Rating: 2
You and the other 2% of the market can live the Apple pipe dream but don't try to push it on us; it's not that we "don't know" we just know better.

Apple products are toys. Years ago you could argue they had an edge in graphics and music but I'm so tired of hearing that decades old arguement and before that, Apple knobs argued about Mac's being PC compatible (ie reading IBM floppy disks) but PC's couldn't open Mac floppy's. The ONLY reason this was the case was a) Mac's had to be PC compatible to survive and b) Apple wouldn't license the file system to anybody but NeXT.

Sure, the iPhone and iPod and even the iPad are cool devices, but they could all be so much better if Apple wasn't so...fruity.


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By fsardis on 4/28/2010 4:48:21 AM , Rating: 2
Watch the Snickers commercial with Mr.T

I have not been managing huge networks, however all the companies i manage have full-fledged networks with DMZ, VoIP, proxy servers, virtual machines, VPN access, etc etc. I can assure you that the principle of securing networks is the same wether you got 5 users or 500 users or 5000 users.
If malware makes it to your clients then you are obviously not filtering their web access.
Second trick in the book, stick firewalls between subnets in your LAN. That could stop malware from spreading inside your LAN. If you have 40k users in just one class B, then I really pity you.

The single biggest threat in security is between the chair and keyboard. Thats the first thing they teach you in network security. Try to eliminate user errors as much as you can and you can sleep easier at night.

And may I ask, why doesn't the malware get detected before it reaches your client machine? Are you not running any AV on your servers?


By Anoxanmore on 4/28/2010 9:46:34 AM , Rating: 2
He is running Mcafee.

=^-^=


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By fic2 on 4/27/2010 1:28:22 PM , Rating: 1
Really? Several people around me run macbooks. They also just got in ~8 Mac Pro workstations. Majority run windows, but there is a decent mixture of macs and linux here. Maybe because the servers that are developed on/for run linux.


By fsardis on 4/27/2010 1:58:15 PM , Rating: 2
Any company may have a mac or two for various reasons depending on the business, however, in my experience there no corporation out there running its infrastructure on Apple servers.
When Apple finally sorts out its networking mess and comes up with something that has half the functionality of Windows DC, they will stand a chance. Until then, they can remain behind the stage and watch the show from there.


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By damianrobertjones on 4/27/2010 4:55:54 PM , Rating: 3
So what happens on the day that macs finally... finally get a great bit massive virus infection that spreads like mad?

Will you smug mac people finally shut up?

I have NOTHING against macs but damn me the users really wind me up. Have you not READ the damn apple support forums? It's like a mirror image of pc problems.

Makes me sick.

P.s. If you are a network admin then maybe you know that Windows can be a damn safe operating system. Heck, apple can make a MASSIVE mistake with the Guest account! Remember that.....


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By sapiens74 on 4/27/10, Rating: -1
By fsardis on 4/28/2010 5:09:30 AM , Rating: 2
There is a saying: The tools don't make the technician. You can run whatever you like but if it is misconfigured you will always have problems. If you are indeed running all that and you are still getting virus incidents, then either find another job or RTFM and start configuring things properly.

Can't screw a Mac eh? Pwn2Own 2010 ring a bell? Under a minute (again) but this time had a user browse a site. Actually took 10 secs flat and the person who did it had 20 zero-day OSX exploits in his "pockets". And yes the system was fully patched. Must be amazing to have your system hacked in under a minute for two years in a row eh? By the way, we are not talking about hacking just the browser here. The man got full shell access to the system. Just google it. Can't screw a a Mac even if you tried...

Running a company on Apple? No matter how you cut it, it is a ticking time-bomb and when it does explode, who has the experience to clean it up?


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By Etsp on 4/27/2010 7:34:48 PM , Rating: 2
Say a person gets sick, and they almost never come in direct contact with another person, the odds are low that the illness can spread. However, if the person was living in a crowded area, the illness can spread quite rapidly and become a pandemic.

That's the whole reason why there hasn't been a Mac virus running rampant: There simply isn't enough direct contact between Macs for it to be possible.

Now, if there was a virus that infected Macs via Windows PC's... then it's much more likely to be widespread.

So, in order for the Macs to be hit hard with a virus, they either need to a: be more popular, or b: have it delivered via windows machines.

So, ironically, if sapiens74 gets his/her wish for Macs to be a lot more popular and prevalent, then you are also likely going to get your wish of a widespread Mac virus...


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By sapiens74 on 4/27/10, Rating: -1
RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By Etsp on 4/27/2010 10:53:00 PM , Rating: 2
I am in no way saying that there are no Mac viruses, nor am I saying that it is harder to write viruses for Macs. All I said was that because Macs rarely communicate directly with each other in businesses, it is much much harder to spread an effective virus.

The hackers that are out for fame (outside of a small circle) are largely script kiddies...they don't do things that haven't been done before, they are limited by the tools that others have built.

As far as your 25% CPU cycles to AV is concerned, bad software is bad software is bad software. AV is no exception. If your AV products consume that much CPU time, then you need to find another product.


RE: That's the Price of running Windows
By MScrip on 4/28/2010 2:57:27 AM , Rating: 2
Email spreads viruses and websites spread spyware.

Macs receive email and Macs visit websites.

Why hasn't someone simply written a virus to shut up all the Mac users? If it's not that hard to write a virus for Macs... why can't anyone do it?

Is it because of the Mac's Unix foundation and because you have to put in your administrator password before anything can gain access to the system?

Is the only person targeting Macs that guy that keeps winning the Pwn to Own contest year after year?


By fsardis on 4/28/2010 2:09:03 PM , Rating: 2
The answer to that is very, very simple. First of all, yes, malware exists on mac but it is now widespread. The reason Apple is not often targeted by malware is because of their tiny market share. Who would spend months writing malware for a platform with 5% market share when you could be spending time writing malware for the 90%?

The time that hackers worked for pride and reputation is long gone. It is about money now and Apple just doesn't pay. The thing to consider though is that Apple has extremely weak security and more importantly Mac users are even less aware of security than Windows users. If someone does sit down and write malware for OSX, we will see some of the most embarrassing moments for any company in history. For one, I highly doubt Apple has the experience and expertise in security that Microsoft has. Microsoft has spent decades sorting out security problems, unlike Apple. So not only will you have rampant malware but most likely you will get a very slow reaction from Apple too. That's my guess anyway.

At the end of the day, consider this: Even with access restriction for users, do you really think it would be hard to bundle it with an installer as a trojan? It's not like most Macs even have an AV. Even worse, don't you think there are people out there who would type the admin password anyway even if they did not know what it was for?


By fsardis on 4/28/2010 2:24:57 PM , Rating: 1
Couple of things to note here:

1 in 10 households implies 10%. Apple has half and in fact it dropped this year. Google it.

Creating the first Mac virus is an opportunity long gone. Besides, these days hackers are not into this for fame and most importantly, if they do it for fame, the chances are they will be caught.

It's Mac not MAC (Media Access Control). At the very least learn how to spell it.

25% on AV? Really? Because I got MS Security Essentials and it does not take 25% CPU when it is running a scan, let alone when it is idle. Actually when it is idle its 0% You are obviously clueless.

Windows users are not into Windows for the market share. They are into Windows because everything out there works with Windows, is made for Windows and simply performs better in Windows. With Apple you get a limited choice of hardware and software. You also get a limited choice of looks and options on the systems. You also get an interface that is still stuck in the era of WinXP if not Win3 in terms of functionality. And finally, you get caught in a horrible loop where you can only work with what Apple has blessed and if there is nothing that suits your needs you are out of luck.

And yes, I am typing this on a MBP because I wanted to give Apple a chance and my conclusion is, never again. By the way, I am into music production and by any account PC beats Mac any day.


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