McAfee said Thursday it was trying to determine how it bungled a security update that crashed perhaps tens of thousands of PCs across the globe. Computers from Australia and Kentucky to the United Kingdom began freezing up late Wednesday after the Santa Clara, California, security firm released an updated definition file for its corporate antivirus software. The update mistakenly identified a critical Windows file — svchost.exe —... 

McAfee, a household name for computer virus-protection, is facing accusations it dupes customers into purchasing third-party services, and hands over consumer banking information to enable those transactions. A proposed federal class action in San Francisco claims that, once McAfee customers purchase McAfee software online, a pop-up appears even before the McAfee download begins. “The pop-up, mimicking the look of the other pages on the... 

We all know that IT security and operations is becoming a more challenging and untenable problem day by day – see “Top 10 Reasons Your Security Program Sucks and Why You Can’t Do Anything About it” – The reality is that we continue to build on top of inherently insecure and fundamentally weak foundations, such  Read More →

Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by researchers at anti-virus firm McAfee. “We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level of sophisticated attack,” says Dmitri Alperovitch,... 

From Computer World UK (here) Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone. Now it’s time for Amrit Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday—oh, whatever—to pay our industry back for all the dubious cheer it spread in 2009. Believe me, when it comes to this list, it’s much better to give than receive. Here goes: A Junior  Read More →