Symantec Update Causes Crash Down of Chinese Computers

A security update to security firm Symantec's anti-virus application collapsed a large number of PCs in China on Friday (May 18, 2007). This happened when the software application considered malware on two essential Windows .dll files and therefore erased them.

The incident affected more than 1,000 customers in Guangzhou on the same noon. They encountered a sudden blue screen with an error information following. The problem occurred repeatedly every time the system started up.

On late Friday, the CISRT (Chinese Internet-Security Response Team) posted a warning message on its blog. It said the day turned out terrible for many Chinese users particularly commercial users who have Norton products installed. Webwire published this in news on May 19, 2007.

However, one user wrote to the alt.comp.anti-virus newsgroup that by removing the .dll files, Windows XP would not start up again while the system Safe Mode also stopped functioning, as published by Computerworld.

But consumers of the affected systems, that remained the same following reboot, could use the Windows recovery console to take their systems back to the normal state, according to Symantec. Computerworld published this, May 20 2007.

The issue made a huge impact on Chinese people. According to other reports, 7,000 or more users already called Rising Antivirus, a security firm in China. They sought help to recover their computers. On Friday, Rising Web site's front page showed the threat gauge with red, the top most ranking in 2007.

On May 17, the latest virus Norton database was upgraded. Some computer specialists said that after upgrading, the software inadvertently considered two critical system files as virus and so deleted them from computers running Windows XP.

That locked the computer even after performing a restart. According to experts' confirmation, the incident would also affect people using the less complicated Chinese version of Windows-XP and Norton Anti-virus. News.xinhuanet published this on May 20, 2007.

Someone claiming as "Ink" said on the Wilders Security Forum that all important news channels in the country reported the event since 6 a.m. but Symantec remained silent. Webwire published this as news on May 19, 2007.

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» SPAMfighter News - 5/25/2007