Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Kentucky Hit Hard by McAfee Mistake


After computers all over the nation started going haywire today, antivirus vendor McAfee Inc. confirmed that a software update caused its antivirus program to misidentify a harmless Windows file as a virus. This prevented afflicted computers from rebooting.

The Courier-Journal reports that the Louisville Metro Police computers were especially hit hard by the unexpected glitch, as were local school systems. According to Ben Jackey, a spokesman for Jefferson County Public Schools, some employees reported their computers turning off by themselves. In Lexington, computers in City Hall went down, as well as in hospitals.

The helplessness of many organizations without computers serves to illustrate the grave danger of becoming too overdependent on them to run day-to-day operations.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was @ UK Hospital yesterday and all the computers there where down