Antivirus software deletes itself

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/20/sophos-antimalware-software-detects-malware-deletes-critical-binaries/

by jdbevan • 14 years ago

66 29 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

neya• 14 years ago

I'm sorry...but I can't control my laughter...hahahahahaahahaha...seriously...best news I've ever read this week!

kilian• 14 years ago

Would this then be the first digital autoimmune disease? ;)

emilis_info• 14 years ago

Or should we call it suicideware?

1SaltwaterC• 14 years ago

Staging fail?

johnx123-up2• 14 years ago

Like this company http://socialav.com/ crowd sourcing is the future. Good talents are really hard in antivirus industries.

linker3000• 14 years ago

65+ pages of sysadmin angst:

http://community.sophos.com/t5/Sophos-Endpoint-Protection/Is...

johnx123-up2• 14 years ago

This is why crowd sourcing alone might be a solution in AV industry to quickly push patches.

UnoriginalGuy2• 14 years ago

The author of this article doesn't know what the term "bricking" means. If you delete key Windows files you will not "brick" a PC.

"Bricking" is the process of turning a physical piece of hardware into a device as useful as a "brick" (thus its name). It was coined to describe what happens when you try and flash a phone and it is unrecoverably damaged.

krisoft• 14 years ago

I thought "Bricking" is a relative term. For someone with an compatible in circuit debugger/programer that phone would be probably salvageable. For someone else a corrupted operation system could be indistinguishable from the "bricked" state, because of lack of experience, or skills to fix the problem.

UnoriginalGuy2• 14 years ago

Realistically even if you had the equipment, those phones are beyond economical repair given the amount of time you would have to invest in fixing them.

Even if you remove key Windows files sometimes Windows can recover its self using the backup copies located in %windir%\winsxs\Backup (and several other places depending on system configuration).

But generally bricking refers to the state of disrepair where something has to be thrown in the bin because it cannot be used in the future. The closest PC equivalents would be either corrupting the BIOS/UEFI or over-heating a component like the graphics card.

DominikR2• 14 years ago

True, I've "bricked" my Android phone a few times by flashing a new OS version, and always recovered it with ADB.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

Bricking an electronic device is the equivalent of totaling a car. It could be repaired, but repairing would cost more than the device's total value.

nvmc• 14 years ago

In my experience bricking refers to the rendering of a device inoperable (and irreparable) by the means available to a savvy user. Usually by method of failed firmware flash. Generally you're looking at soldering some wires up to whatever chip and reflashing it manually.

motoford• 14 years ago

This article was written by the same guy who last week described Steve Wozniak as "infamous" in a different article, then later went back and changed it.

gpjt• 14 years ago

Looks like he's fixed this one too. He says that he did it in one of the comments, though.

timinman• 14 years ago

This was brought on by an unforeseen natural evolution of antivirus software.

1. The software becomes sentient, learns to define, recognize and delete viruses on it's own.

2. The software realizes that by every definition it is itself a virus and must delete itself. :)

dhimes• 14 years ago

1.5 The software decides that Man is a virus and must be eliminated.

duiker101• 14 years ago

We all know that in the end the "bug" is always between the chair and the keyboard.

chimeracoder• 14 years ago

1.25: The software gets distracted by its own self-awareness. Crisis averted. (http://xkcd.com/1046/)

hmc• 14 years ago

What is life without death?

fmavituna• 14 years ago

Nice, taste your own medicine AV companies!

Recent movement (last couple of years) by AV companies blocking everything which leads legitimate small businesses to take the stupid whitelisting route via AV companies or pointless customer calls to explain it's a false positive (and even when customer is convinced it's still not good enough because corporate doesn't allow them to exclude some binaries or disable AV).

Tichy• 14 years ago

Finally an antivirus product I can approve of.

islon• 14 years ago

Finally an antivirus that really works. Next in series: antivirus shows message "please install linux and get rid of me".

elliotlai• 14 years ago

it should delete Windows first

nradov• 14 years ago

My employer got hit by this yesterday so I'm seeing occasional Sophos notifications. Sophos sucks just as badly as any other AV program: it slows down my laptop, shortens battery life, and has an uncanny knack for deciding to run a full scan right when I'm in the middle of something important.

rational_indian• 14 years ago

First case of autoimmune disease in the digital world?

boopboop• 14 years ago

Sophos has been around for a very long time. I don't understand how an anti-virus company could not take action to prevent this time of thing from happening.

1) Why don't they have a secure hash of each of the files and add that to a whitelist of files never to delete?

2) "You want to ensure your secondary option (when cleanup is not available or does not work) to be set to 'deny access' and not delete or move." Is this not the default configuration?

Antivirus software deletes itself

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