Due to a botched update, some McAfee Anti-virus users have been informed that Microsoft Excel, a very popular spreadsheet program, is in-fact a virus.
For a while on Friday 10th March, Excel was marked as being the W95/CTX virus. The ‘false-positive’, as the problem is technically known, was due to an error in the definitions file McAfee sent to software users. Definitions files tell Anti-virus software what to look for, and often contains updates to respond to new virus threats.
McAfee Anti-virus dutifully quarantined and moved the files (including core executables such as excel.exe), rendering the Office software fairly useless. After receiving a number of reports from customers, McAfee recognised the problem and rolled out an updated definitions file just a few hours later.
McAfee is not alone in making false-positive gaffes. Last year, Microsoft’s AntiSpyware software flagged Norton Anti-virus as being malicious software.
News source: Neowin
well, i wish someone would ‘accidently’ release something that removes Symantec coz its a ‘virus’. i swear it does more damage, my computer goes really slowly for 2hours every moring when it runs the comulsary virus scan
Why the hell do you still have symantec installed? In the last 3 years have you been infected with a virus that you couldn’t simply download a quick patch/fix of the internet?