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McAfee Fixes Antivirus Software Bug; Channel Chief Apologizes
McAfee has issued a hotfix for buggy antivirus security updates, and Channel Chief Gavin Struthers has apologized to partners for the problem. End of story. Nothing to see here. Move along. Oh, unless you want the actual details. Here you go...
The VAR Guy
August 23, 2012
2 Min Read
apologize
McAfee has issued a hotfix for buggy antivirus security updates, and Channel Chief Gavin Struthers has apologized to partners for the problem. End of story. Nothing to see here. Move along. Oh, unless you want the actual details. Here you go…Struthers posted a detailed blog describing what went wrong, outlined corrective steps for partners, and apologized for the issue.
The blog headline didn’t dance around the issue, stating clearly: Mandatory Security Hotfix & My Commitment to Our Partners.
Chatter about the McAfee bug went viral when BT posted a message to customers on Aug. 20. It read, in part:
“We’re aware that some of our customers have lost access to the internet after recent updates by McAfee.
If you right-click on your McAfee icon and then select About, you will be able to see the “DAT version”. If this is 6807 or 6808, you are likely to be affected.”
Struthers, meanwhile, described McAfee’s corrective actions:
“Focusing on the corporate customers, as soon as the issue was confirmed, a SNS (Support Notification Service) alert was distributed to all subscribing partners as well as Gold and Platinum support customers. Within hours the DAT’s were updated and a new DAT (6809) was issued to customers and partners to correct this issue. Shortly after the updated and new DATs were released, a patch was created and released. Because it may not be readily apparent to the customer whether there are any problems/risks, we issued a mandatory security hotfix, meaning that it is required that all customers implement, which can be accessed at: McAfee KnowledgeBase (KB76004).
Struthers closed the blog by apologizing to partners and customers.
Software updates from antivirus software companies have triggered multiple problems in recent months. Symantec in July fixed and anti-virus software bug that triggered blue screens of death on some systems.
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