Antivirus software has managed to make a mess of things again.
This kind of disaster is not exactly new. Back in May 2007, Norton famously targeted netapi32.dll and lsasrv.dll on Simplified Chinese editions of Windows. Then in November 2008, AVG went after user32.dll. Now it is McAfee’s turn.
This time the culprit was McAfee DAT version 5958, which incorrectly flagged svchost.exe on Windows XP SP3. The result was brutal: affected systems would fall into an endless reboot loop. Reports said hundreds of thousands of PCs were turned into unwilling test subjects. A quick look across Twitter and technical communities in different countries was enough to show how widespread the damage was.
The error being reported looked like this:
The file C:WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe contains the W32/Wecorl.a Virus.
Undetermined clean error, OAS denied access and continued.
Detected using Scan engine version 5400.1158 DAT version 5958.0000.
But maybe everyone was misunderstanding the situation. McAfee identified svchost.exe as malware, and honestly, there is a certain ruthless honesty in that. Hasn’t svchost.exe long been one of the great sources of misery on Windows?
For years it has been the comfortable shelter of countless viruses, trojans, and assorted junk software. Windows users have endured its chaos in silence for ages. After all that time, only McAfee dared to stand up to Microsoft, point at svchost.exe, and say: this one, right here.
What kind of spirit is that?