Symantec Acknowledges Programming Bug As Windows Users Experience Computer Crashes

Symantec is supposed to protect your computer from viruses and malware, not cause it to crash and burn, unfortunately that is exactly what has been happening lately because of a bug discovered inside the company’s recent anti-virus software update for Windows PCs.

The crash appears to be limited to Windows XP operating system users and Symantec is currently working on a fix for the bug which should restore PCs to service as usual.

On the Symantec Endpoint Protection product page the company writes:

“On July 11, 2012 at approximately 10:30 PM PT, Security Response started receiving reports of customers experiencing blue screens on Windows XP machines after applying definitions July 11th revision 18 and SONAR definitions July 11th rev11. This update only contained signature updates and no change to the SONAR driver.

The problem has been identified as a compatibility issue in SONAR definitions released July 11th at 6:25PM PT. Once the cause of the issue was discovered, the signature was removed from the definition set and an updated definition set was published. This “rollback” of signatures was done on July 12th at 2:51AM PT. Once the signature was rolled back, no new issues were reported from the field.”

The bug specifically affects users who are running Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 12.1, Endpoint Protection 12.1, and Endpoint Protection.cloud.

The bug has not affected any Mac based systems at this time and Symantec has removed the incompatible elements from the update.

Customers who have been affected can expected some type of compensation package from the team at Symantec.