PSU PC’s shut down

A faulty software update released yesterday morning by McAfee, a company that provides computer virus protection services, caused computers to be shut down around the world, including many at Portland State.

The update caused the anti-virus software to detect a “false positive” after it was downloaded onto computers. It deleted a Windows file essential to the operating system’s functions, according to Sharon Blanton, chief information officer of the Office of Information Technologies.

“This file was bad—it caused McAfee to look at a file that belongs in Windows’ system and view it as basically a bad guy,” Blanton said.

Affected computers automatically shut down after the false detection was made as a self-preservation mechanism. Some computers were sent into a continuous loop of booting up and then shutting down again, Blanton said.

 “Thousands [of computers] could have been affected but we stopped the antivirus updates as soon as we realized what was happening,” Blanton said. “OIT-managed labs and classrooms were hit.”

Macintosh computers were unaffected by the event.

A software fix was released later in the day by McAfee, which Blanton said OIT was testing on a handful of computers yesterday afternoon at about 3 p.m.

“We have already successfully applied a fix to a test group of computers. We will continue to roll the fix throughout the night,” Blanton said late yesterday.
About 750 computers were slated to receive the fix last night.

McAfee issues periodical routine updates, which are grabbed by servers that pass them along to the thousands of computers at PSU, Blanton said. Various news outlets report that the update error only affected corporate customers using McAfee’s services.

There was no loss of data detected as of yesterday Blanton said, but if users encounter problems with their machines they are encouraged to contact the OIT Help Desk at 503–725–HELP.