On April 21 thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of computers automatically downloaded a faulty update to virus protection software which identified key windows operating files as a virus. The affected computers immediately lost internet connections and most were inoperable as a result of the affliction.
McAffee's chief executive posted an apology around midnight the day following the disaster in a blog that was not linked from the main McAfee page, but buried somewhere on the back pages. I only found it as a result of the excellent reporting of the incident by Declan McCullagh of Cnet.com.
See the main article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20003074-83.html.
The powers that be at McAfee finally did take action to help affected users on the main McAfee web site by Tuesday of the following week and possibly earlier, but if you had not already received help fixing your computer you would not have been able to access their site anyway.
Fortunate for us in my office, we did not have all of our eggs in one basket. There were only three computers in our office disabled by this faulty McAfee update. There were three others with Norton installed which were unaffected. One of these was used to access the Cnet.com site to discover what the problem was. We know a great IT guy who got us up and running again by the next morning.
The purpose of this post is to publicize the actions of McAfee in failing to take responsibility for this problem earlier and to thank those responsible for helping us cope with the problem. If you have never read Cnet.com stories before I would encourage you to check them out and see what you can learn. The information available there can be quite technical, but there is much informaion there that is accessible to non-technical users.
Thanks Declan McCullah, thanks Cnet.com, and thanks to Doug Turpin.
