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Antivirus softwares are supposed to protect our computers from malicious programs that would compromise our personal information. But what happens when the supposed protector flags your operating system as malicious software?
Webroot antivirus recently received a bad update that caused the program to flag core Windows system files as malicious. It even temporarily removed some of these files, reports The Hacker News.
The update went live on April 24 but was quickly taken down after fifteen minutes. But considering how the internet works, fifteen minutes is more than enough time for something to spread to various users.
Affected computers included those from individuals, companies and various organizations who depend on Webroot for their online protection.
Adding insult to injury, other customers reported that Webroot started blocking Facebook after the update. The social media giant was being classified as a phishing site.
Apparently, the faulty update caused Webroot to associate legitimate system files with W32.Trojan.Gen files, a type of generic malware.
“Webroot has not been breached and customers are not at risk,” according to the official forum statement.
The Webroot staff is already hard at work to come up with a permanent fix. In the mean time, they have provided workarounds on their official forum site. The easiest of which is to use the Windows restore point from before the update was applied. Alfred Bayle/JB