There's no news yet on McAfee's
website about what happened today when their famed antivirus program went bonkers and froze computers by misidentifying a common Windows file as a virus. If it's an actual virus hack, it's a pretty darn clever one--to make the antivirus program think a system file is a virus so that the computer halts. This might be the first time I'd ever actually applaud a virus creator. I usually prescribe some sort of cruel and unusual punishment for such mongrels who write viruses and then unleash them upon the world's innocent but this time is different.
I hope it's just a glitch in McAfee's program. A virus signature update that went bad but I fear that it isn't. McAfee isn't likely to make such a mistake.
Don't worry, I'm neither lauding the virus writer nor McAfee over this but, as a virus, it's pure genius.
I haven't liked McAfee's antivirus program in at least a decade. It used to be such a simple program, a little TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) application with its cute little "V" icon in your system tray.
But then, about ten years or so ago, they (McAfee) started getting weird like some other virus companies by adding a whole bunch of other stuff to their awesome antivirus programs. The result was a system that ran as slow as stagnant pond scum on a calm day. And, that is pretty darn slow.
I sought out other antivirus programs for my virus-prone Windows systems. For a few years, I used
AVG antivirus and was quite pleased with it. That was until I discovered
Avast. I've stuck with Avast for the past three or four years without disappointment.
I will be curious to find out the real cause of today's glitch with McAfee's antivirus freeze ray that affected so many of the world's computers. I'll wait with the rest of you to find out the answer.
What do you think it was that caused the massive outage--was it a virus or just a signature update gone bad? Was your computer affected?
