By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer
Wed Apr 21, 5:45 pm ET
NEW YORK Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got
stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program
identified a normal Windows file as a virus.
McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update it posted at 9 a.m. Eastern time
caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to misidentify a harmless
file. It has posted a replacement update for download.
McAfee could not say how many computers were affected, but judging by online
postings, the number was at least in the thousands and possibly in the hundreds
of thousands.
McAfee said it did not appear that consumer versions of its software caused
similar problems. It is investigating how the error happened "and will take
measures" to prevent it from recurring, the company said in a statement.
The computer problem forced about a third of the hospitals in Rhode Island to
postpone elective surgeries and stop treating patients without traumas in
emergency rooms, said Nancy Jean, a spokeswoman for the Lifespan system of
hospitals. The system includes Rhode Island Hospital, the state's largest, and
Newport Hospital. Jean said patients who required treatment for gunshot wounds,
car accidents, blunt trauma and other potentially fatal injuries were still
being admitted to the emergency rooms.
In Kentucky, state police were told to shut down the computers in their patrol
cars as technicians tried to fix the problem. The National Science Foundation
headquarters in Arlington, Va., also lost computer access.
Intel Corp. appeared to be among the victims, according to employee posts on
Twitter. Intel did not immediately return calls for comment.
Peter Juvinall, systems administrator at Illinois State University in Normal,
said that when the first computer started rebooting it quickly became evident
that it was a major problem, affecting dozens of computers at the College of
Business alone.
"I originally thought it was a virus," he said. When the tech support people
concluded McAfee's update was to blame, they stopped further downloads of the
faulty software update and started shuttling from computer to computer to get
the machines working again.
In many offices, personal attention to each PC from a technician appeared to be
the only way to fix the problem because the computers weren't receptive to
remote software updates when stuck in the reboot cycle. That slowed the
recovery.
It's not uncommon for antivirus programs to misidentify legitimate files as
viruses. Last month, antivirus software from Bitdefender locked up PCs running
several different versions of Windows.
However, the scale of this outage was unusual, said Mike Rothman, president of
computer security firm Securosis.
"It looks to be a train wreck," Rothman said.
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AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington contributed to this report.