CLARION, Pa., April 29 –
Clarion University was subject to notable technical difficulty when many of the computers on campus were rendered inoperable.
“The PC issues we experienced at the university starting on Wednesday were the result of a faulty software update from our anti-virus software vendor (McAfee),” said Sam Puleio of computing services.
According to Puleio, an update from MacAfee triggered “false positive” virus detections on Windows XP systems on campus and many other groups.
The PCs were not actually infected with a virus, but many systems using McAfee software were rendered inoperable with continuous error messages and broken network connections.
Systems running with Vista and higher and Macs were not affected by the problem.
“A fix was identified Wednesday afternoon, and teams from Computing Services immediately began to patch university PCs,” Puleio said.
“Almost all smart classrooms and computer labs were repaired Wednesday evening,” Puleio said.
Puleio advises individuals who were impacted by this issue should visit the McAfee web site for steps to repair the problem.
The Computing Services Help Desk is also available to answer any questions.
“Frequent updates to anti-virus software are a necessary practice to maintain defenses against the constant discovery of new viruses,” says Puleio.
“To mitigate risks with any similar erroneous updates in the future,” said Puleio, “the vendor needs to implement better quality control practices within their enterprise solutions before updates are released to business customers.”
Puleio also says they are re-examining internal procedures in processing updates from the vendor to full-scale updates through a broader test group before such updates are implemented.
Mat Karda, a freshman computer science major weighed in on the topic.
Karda was not directly affected by the virus, but had associates and friends who were subject to the virus.
“From my understanding, there is a message that says the computer will shut down in a minute, then shut off,” said Karda.
Puleio said there was no emergency text because the Eagle Alert System is reserved for life-threatening events or campus closings, and the PC outages did not qualify as such a crisis.
