VSE 8.7i Patch Failure Downplayed by McAfee

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» 11 June 2009

McAfee's official forums were practically buzzing about the Internet security giant's recently released service pack. Alas, the so-called buzz was not in the least bit positive or inspiring. Instead of improving the services of the anti-virus program that the company is most well-known for, the service pack proved to be as dangerous as any of the malware and exploit attacks McAfee usually protects PCs against, rendering numerous systems unbootable and creating discord within the McAfee customer base.

McAfee's obligatory service pack for its corporate virus-removing software Virus Scan Enterprise 8.7i was supposedly engineered to tackle minor security holes and vulnerabilities. However, it instead tagged several critical Windows system files as malware and automatically removed them. Naturally, this blunder on the program's (or developers') part led to the ultimate breakdown and malfunction of the popular operating system.

The program patch was released a few weeks ago on May 27, but was abruptly pulled on June 2 after problems with the update started to surface and angry customers began complaining. McAfee afterwards issued a discreet announcement on its knowledge base page recommending that users keep the update if they've already installed it.

McAfee's support forum tells a different story that the computer security firm refuses to directly acknowledge. A trip in that particular web portal suggests that quite a lot of McAfee subscribers are suffering from the consequences of installing and keeping poorly written patches in their hard drives.

Several irate and disappointed McAfee customers—system administrators in particular—cite the patch disaster as a massive fiasco that the McAfee management is desperately trying to sweep under the rug. In fact, the company maintained in their official statement that the potential problems posed by their "riskier than an exploit" patch were few and far between, even though they do acknowledge the fact that the problem does exist. They also promised to reissue the update once its system-crippling flaws were finally resolved.

The online security company removed the erroneous patch for its VSE 8.7i from the download servers of its website as a safety measure after the potential issue about the update was discovered. As such, it claims to have preemptively reneged on distributing the service pack before any real, expensive, and epidemic-wide damage was wrought by its own slip-up. Only a limited amount of clients reported trouble with the patch on a small number of PCs.

McAfee also advised its customers to check its Service Portal regularly for more updates and immediately contact its help and support department if they have any further questions or problems regarding the flawed service pack.

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