Microsoft Security Products Flag Google Chrome As a Virus 258
New submitter maeltor writes "Reports poured in this morning that Microsoft's security products, namely Microsoft Security Essentials and Forefront Client Security, were flagging Google Chrome as a virus (PWS:Win32/Zbot) and removing the browser if users chose to clean and reboot their machines. Users reported that the only way to mitigate the problem was to set MSE and Forefront to 'always allow' Zbot, which is generally considered to be a bad idea."
A Google employee in the above support thread notes that Microsoft has now pushed another update to resolve the issue. "On September 30th, 2011, an incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified. On September 30th, 2011, Microsoft released an update that addresses the issue. Signature versions 1.113.672.0 and higher include this update."
Microsoft to Google... (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile some clueless user just switched back to IE.
It is a virus (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome is a virus. You see, it has caused the marketing people at Mozilla to go crazy with the numbering scheme of FF and as a result, borked up my once good to use user interface into a complete mess of new design, misplaced buttons, screwy single menus and a whole host of unusable extensions. Chrome is a virus... that has killed Firefox.
Well, it includes a virus... (Score:3, Insightful)
...known as Adobe Flash.
Re:Virus scanner flags something that is not a vir (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Let's face it, Microsoft would have done this on purpose if they had thought of it and thought they could get away with it, but chances are, this was an honest mistake. Test by: the regular (but hopefully infrequent) false positives you get from any antivirus product. Also test by: the speed at which M$ corrected it. Probably nothing to see here.
Re:Holy crap! (Score:4, Insightful)
A History of "Accidental" Flaggings (Score:1, Insightful)
Not the first time MSFT has flagged competing products as viruses.
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
And one more reason not to trust Microsoft's "security."
Re:Holy crap! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm betting you meant to suggest that the state of security software is pretty wretched these days rather than heap praise on MSSE. Am I right?
Not really that bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my friends was at work for nearly 2 weeks straight after that fiasco.
Re:Cue spooky conspiracy music (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference is: Microsoft has a reputation as a strongly anti-competitive company.
Re:MSE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft to Google... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. If some bug had been discovered in some open source software and was corrected in 2 hours, the comments on the story would be a circlejerk praising the open source community.
Microsoft realizes there's a bug, corrects it within 2 hours, and it's anti-competetive. Sheesh. They did a good job with a quick fix, can't we just acknowledge success when it happens?
Re:A joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
I realise you were going for humour, but Google does a lot of very shady things involving auto-updates and integrating with unnecessary parts of a system. Why does my Firefox installation need a Google Update plug-in I never asked for, and why does it keep getting reactivated even though I've explicitly turned it off?
The reaction might not have been deliberate on this occasion, but I am utterly lacking in sympathy if Google's shady code starts getting treated like malware. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's still a duck, even though sometimes it can taste good.
Re:Whoops! (Score:2, Insightful)
They've got V8 generating code at runtime, Nacl sandbox using segment registers, installer doing address relocation after decompressing (probably using custom x86-specific compression algo like Snappy), an always-running update checker, etc. It's no wonder they'd get randomly marked as a virus.
It's a joke, son! A joke, I say! (Score:2, Insightful)
I applaud your choice, good sir! 42 is always the right answer.