[Yr7-10it] McAfee problems

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi all,

If you, or your friends, use McAfee anti-virus for your machines, then
you might (or, may not) be well aware that their virus update for this
week was majorly faulty. In fact, this automatic update has disabled a
large number of computers worldwide, and it's not an easy fix. I guess
if your machine was affected, you won't be reading this. But maybe you
have friends running McAfee whose machines crashed badly this week ...

--
A Long Day at McAfee 

by Barry McPherson, McAfee's head of customer support 

<http://siblog.mcafee.com/support/a-long-day-at-mcafee>

As I approach my 14th straight hour on the phone with my worldwide 
support team, and a number of them logging a similar number of hours, I 
can assure you that we are still working because I and the rest of the 
McAfee team are taking the issues raised in your comments to my previous 
blog, in our support forums, on the phone with us and elsewhere very 
seriously. 

In our ongoing efforts to protect our customers from a seemingly 
endlessly multiplying variety and volume of attacks, today we released a 
update file that clearly did more harm than good. 

There was a legitimate threat and we wanted to protect our customers, as 
we have done successfully thousands and thousands of times before. But in 
trying to do so, we created negative and unintended consequences for some 
very important people. Many of you.

Having talked to literally hundreds of my colleagues around the world and 
emailed thousands to try and find the best way to correct these issues, 
let me say this has not been my favorite day. Not for me, or for McAfee. 
Not by a long shot.

Mistakes happen. No excuses. The nearly 7,000 employees of McAfee are 
focused right now on two things, in this order. 

First, help our customers who have been affected by this issue get back 
to business as usual. And second, once that is done, make sure we put the 
processes in place so this never happens again.

If you are a enterprise/corporate account, and you have an issue these 
entries in our virus information library and the knowledge base provide 
workarounds for this issue. If you are a consumer and have an issue, this 
support page provides information for impacted consumers or call +1 866 
622 3911. We have teams of people standing by to help. (To contact McAfee 
by phone in your region, go to the “Contact Us” page on our Web site and 
select your country for the correct number.)

I also recommend customers sign up for our Support Notification Service 
to get real critical product information via e-mail. Go to the SNS 
Subscription Preference Center to subscribe. For more information, view 
the SNS KnowledgeBase article and FAQ. 

Barry

--

Cheers,
Stephen