McAfee's Trojan horse error gets developer's goat

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: September 13, 2004 3:42:35 AM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Subject: McAfee's Trojan horse error gets developer's goat

McAfee's Trojan horse error gets developer's goat

By Kristyn Maslog-Levis
Special to CNET News.com
Story last modified September 10, 2004, 7:22 AM PDT


An Australian software developer is considering suing McAfee after
the antivirus company wrongly identified his Internet setup program
as a Trojan horse in a recent virus definition update.

Mark Griffiths of Brisbane said he is "not ruling out" filing a
lawsuit against McAfee even after the antivirus company released on
Thursday an update to its DAT virus definition file that fixes the
false positive.

Griffiths sells the Internet setup program, ISPWizard , to Internet
service providers in more than 20 countries. McAfee antivirus
software on ISP customers' computers labeled ISPWizard as the
BackDoor-AKZ Trojan horse. Because the McAfee software automatically
eliminates the program from the users' system, many were not able to
connect to their ISP.

Griffiths said he was first notified about the mistake on Sept. 2 by
ISPs in the United States. They had been alerted by their customers,
who had not been able to access their Internet services. Immediately
after being notified, Griffiths sent an e-mail to McAfee but did not
hear back from the antivirus vendor until Monday.

Griffiths estimated a loss in revenue of at least 50 percent for this
month because the program was labeled a Trojan. He added that one of
his customers lost $3,000 after the provider's customers shifted to
another ISP as a result of the McAfee difficulties.

Allan Bell, McAfee marketing director for the Asia-Pacific region,
said the company released a new DAT file on Thursday including
changes that addressed Griffiths' problem. Bell explained that the
software identifies Trojan horses based on a signature or a pattern.
Because of this, he said, "there is always a danger of a false
positive," meaning the DAT file matches a program that is not a virus.

...

http://news.com.com/2100-7350-5361660.html



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