McAfee retracts bug damage estimate

A McAfee update released on Wednesday caused computers using Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 3 to incorrectly identify a legitimate operating system component as containing a virus. Affected computers experienced networking problems or repeated rebooting. McAfee has since removed the buggy update code from the company's servers.

McAfee's executive vice president, Worldwide Technical Support & Customer Service, Barry McPherson said on an official McAfee blog yesterday that the problem wasn't widespread. "We believe that this incident has impacted less than one half of 1 per cent of our enterprise accounts globally and a fraction of that within the consumer base," he said.

But today the mention of "less than one half of 1 per cent" appears to have been modified. "We believe that this incident has impacted a small percentage of our enterprise accounts globally and a fraction of our consumer base home users of products such as McAfee VirusScan Plus, McAfee Internet Security Suite and McAfee Total Protection," the blog now states.

The reason for the removal was "to restate number of customers impacted", according to the blog.

For more on this story, read McAfee retracts bug damage estimate on ZDNet Australia.