Scareware hackers exploit McAfee false positive problem

Hackers are exploiting a problem with McAfee’s anti-virus product that has caused hundreds of thousands of computers around the world to repeatedly reboot themselves.

The New York Times (and many other news outlets) have reported on the problems businesses suffered after a detection update issued by McAfee yesterday caused its anti-virus product to mistakenly detect a harmless Windows file, svchost.exe, as “W32/Wecorl.a” and caused computers to become inoperable.

To its credit, McAfee is discussing the problem on its online community forum, has…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.