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» VIEW ALL POSTS May 21 2007   8:30AM GMT

Symantec update cripples Chinese PCs



Posted by: Bill Brenner
Security Vendor News

Millions of Chinese computers crashed over the weekend, thanks to a flawed Symantec Norton AntiVirus signature update. China’s state-sponsored Xinhau News Agency reported that more than 1,000 customers were affected as of Friday afternoon. Victims found themselves starting at a blue screen with an error message. The problem reportedly persisted after rebooting the machines.

Symantec confirmed the problem was a botched antivirus signature upgrade and that the company was working to resolve it.

The SANS Internet Storm Center said it received reports of the problem as well. “We received a report that Symantec Antivirus was identifying two system files (netapp32.dll and lsass.exe) on the simplified Chinese version of Windows XP SP2 as a virus (Backdoor.Haxdoor) and deleting them,” the storm center Web site said. “This prevents the machines from booting correctly.”

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Security Bytes » Symantec: Threat analysis system to blame for bad update  |   May 22 2007   8:52AM GMT

[...] Yesterday I wrote about how millions of Chinese computers crashed over the weekend because of a flawed Symantec Norton AntiVirus signature update, and how the antivirus giant was working to resolve the problem. Symantec has offered an update, saying its automated threat analysis system was responsible for the bad signature update. China’s state-sponsored Xinhau News Agency reported that more than 1,000 customers were affected as of Friday afternoon. Victims found themselves starting at a blue screen with an error message. The problem reportedly persisted after rebooting the machines. [...]


 
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