To: All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff
           <everybody@illinois.edu> 
    From: "Michael Corn" <mcorn@illinois.edu>

Reply-To: securitysupport@illinois.edu
 Subject: MASSMAIL - Update On Campus Antivirus Problems

Earlier today, our campus antivirus vendor, McAfee, released an antivirus
signature definition file (known as a "DAT") which contained a bug. This
bug caused a number of computers running Windows XP to appear to be
infected with a computer virus and generally interfere with the operation
of the computer. This problem is not limited to our campus but is impacting
McAfee customers nationally.

Computers affected by the buggy DAT may reboot frequently or report the
virus W32/Wecorl.a was found.

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms you are probably seeing the
impact of this buggy DAT. McAfee has released a new and corrected DAT and
the buggy DAT has been replaced in the campus DAT repositories by CITES
Security. Many machines will automatically update and repair themselves.
Others may require manual intervention.

We *strongly* encourage you to talk to the IT professional staff in your
unit for assistance in repairing computers that are not repairing
themselves. For those of you without IT support (or on your home machines)
McAfee has posted work-arounds on their web site at:
http://vil.nai.com/vil/5958_false.htm. Please note that these instructions
are not for the faint at heart but were created for IT professionals. The
CITES Help Desk is also available for those without local support:
http://www.cites.illinois.edu/help/ or 244-7000.

Once we have completed a fuller recovery guide, it will be linked off of
the CITES Home page, http://www.cites.illinois.edu.

This problem has been widely reported in the press, some of which is linked
below:

Press Coverage:
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/21/business/AP-US-TEC-McAfee-Antivirus-Flaw.html>
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175896/Flawed_McAfee_update_paralyzes_corporate_PCs?taxonomyId=125>
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:MFE


MC
-- 
Michael Corn
Chief Privacy and Security Officer
Office of the CIO
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(217)265-0588
mcorn@illinois.eduThis mailing approved by:
The Office of the Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

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