RSSTrend Micro Apologizes for Update Snafu
By Ed Oswald | Published April 25, 2005, 3:07 PM
Customers of antivirus firm Trend Micro are being notified of an erroneous update sent out by the company on Friday afternoon. Customers who installed the update during that time and met certain software criteria experienced high CPU usage causing systems to either become unusable or crash.
"The update was released to combat new threats called 'Bots'", Michael Sweeney, public relations director at Trend Micro, told BetaNews. Bots are a new type of threat where infected machines become beacons for spam e-mails and worms by sending out infected e-mails unbeknownst to the user.
According to Trend Micro, the problem affected only Windows XP PCs running Service Pack 2. The issue was traced to a signature file update sent out by the company. However, even a promise of support to correct the problem did not stem the anger of some users.
"This...update took down virtually all 1,500 of our Windows XP SP2 PCs and required many hours of work to resolve," one user reported to ZDNet UK. "How in the world could Trend release a signature file that disables all Windows XP SP2 machines?"
Trend Micro quickly worked to quell rumors that the problems were caused by a virus within the update to its Scan Engine. Sweeney emphasized that while only a certain subset of customers were affected, the company "apologizes for the problems we caused" and would work to get all their users running again.
Sweeney also said that the company will expand its support hours to accommodate the additional load that the problem has generated. Support "is the clear objective," he said.
Users wishing to get more information can visit the Trend Micro Web site for more details.
Friday, I was scrambling with another user over at Neowin, trying to figure out what the hell happened and why the "system" process was chewing up 99% cpu. We had no idea it was that one update, but we narrowed it down to TM after about an hour of investigating. He then told me how someone he knew had 4,000 systems at his place of emplyment go down because of this.
I love Trend Micro and their product, but damn, they really need to check this stuff out more effectively in the future otherwise I'll walk away.
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|Same here. I Got the call from the VP of Franchise Development that his "laptop wouldn't boot into Windows."
Ran around screaming with my hands in the air until we discovered it was TM. Had to completely turn off our VPN and RAS servers. That prompted an onslaught of phone calls... Friday rocked. :)
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|Wasn't just Windows Xp SP2. We had a couple win2k3 servers also experience the same issues after this update came out.
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|The article says users who downloaded this will be compensated? What is the compensation?
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|I'm guessing it's worked out on a per-customer basis.
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|I've just received word that the rumors of compensation can neither be confirmed nor denied by Trend Micro's public relations department. They did say that support will be offered to all customers affected.
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|And people were laughing at me for not wanting to install SP2! Ya, I'm sure this isn't a problem with SP2 programming, but still, SP2 is a major change to the OS and I dont want to do it yet so stop pusing me! lol.
ClamWin is getting better and better, so I don't need Trend or Norton or McAfee anyway.
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|I'm sorry but ClamWin will never have the testing resources that Trend or Symantec have. They won't have hundreds of def updates within a day as Symantec and Trend do.
Any enterprise depending on this cute project has gotta be asking for it.
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|Personally, I use ClamWin myself at home but I agree with you that it's got no place in the enterprise. For starters, it doesn't have any real-time protection except for the Outlook plug-in. In all other respects, it's purely an on-demand/scheduled file system scanner. That's good enough for me, but it's not nearly good enough for morons who STILL think they'll see a naked picture of Anna Kournikova if they keep clicking on every unexpected attachment they get.
It's disappointing to see Trend stumble this badly, but one big incident in several years is not going to bother me. Spend a few years with Symantec or McAfee and see how much aggravation you accumulate.
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|We migrated to Officescan 7 just about 9 days ago. Consider myself lucky. :)
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|What else! Anyone else notice that the built in URL filter on internet security 2005 does not support any other browser than IE. I recently purchased Opera 8 only to find every blocked webpage opened without a hitch. So much for a customers right of choice.
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