In the digital equivalent of an autoimmune disease, Microsoft Exchange servers at a handful of companies have crashed because of a flaw in the Network Associates antivirus software that’s designed to protect them. Network Associates confirmed Thursday that in the past two days, four customers have been affected by a problem in its McAfee GroupShield 5.2 antivirus software for Exchange 2000 servers. A fifth company discovered the issue, but didn’t suffer a crash, the security software maker said. A patch for the flaw was issued to clients in January, said Network Associates, but apparently, several corporations have yet to apply the fix. The vulnerability causes the GroupShield software to crash–corrupting the Exchange message store–when an e-mail message with certain characteristics is received by Exchange servers. “Customers that haven’t applied the patch will want to schedule some immediate downtime to do the administration,” said a technician familiar with the problem. Companies that don’t apply the patch could be looking at an extensive e-mail outage. “We are talking hours of restore time, in a best-case scenario,” he said. Full Story
About OODA Analyst
OODA is comprised of a unique team of international experts capable of providing advanced intelligence and analysis, strategy and planning support, risk and threat management, training, decision support, crisis response, and security services to global corporations and governments.