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Trend Micro Bug Hits Several Important Computers

Posted by Zonk on from the disgruntled-travelers dept.

dmarx writes "The Japan Times reports that a bug in Trend Micro's antivirus software has caused the CPUs of several important computers, including those at East Japan Railway, to grind to a halt. A bug free version was released on noon Saturday." From the article: "Kyodo News experienced LAN access failure from around 8:20 a.m. to shortly before noon. The Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun also had trouble with their LANs at their Tokyo and Osaka bureaus, but the problems did not affect editing or printing of their evening editions."

8 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Before the flury of obvios train crash jokes start by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That was East Japan Railway. The crash was on Japan Rail West.

  2. Sounds familiar. by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The buggy file slowed down computer performance substantially by making CPUs run at almost full capacity, the software company said.

    Sounds like every interactively-scanning antivirus program I've ever installed. I wonder, when Microsoft releases server benchmarks, if they run them with antivirus software running in the background? I think this would give a 10%-15% edge to operating systems that don't require such measures of protection.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
    1. Re:Sounds familiar. by Will2k_is_here · · Score: 5, Funny

      No viruses on BeOS. Actually, no virus checkers either...

      No users either...

    2. Re:Sounds familiar. by cortana · · Score: 5, Funny

      Overall, sounds like the ideal server platform to admin. :)

    3. Re:Sounds familiar. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The different he's talking about with PHP is using mod_php as opposed to php.exe. If Apache uses mod_php, it goes out and hits php4.dll just like your asp.dll. If it's not using mod_php, it's going out and executing "php.exe %1" every time you hit a PHP page, waiting for the result, then sending it to the browser. This is much slower than the DLL approach.

      You just need mod_php compiled in to Apache (the equivilent of ISAPI), *not* all of PHP, for this to work.

  3. I expect 100 posts like this. by muyuubyou · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... but in case you're wondering if this may have caused the derailment at Amagasaki, apparently it didn't. Amagasaki is located in western Japan (covered by JR-West).

    Still, the coincidence in time makes me wonder. I sure hope they don't use Windows in the train system I use... just read the EULA. My life is pretty "mission-critical" to me.

  4. New sales slogan by Alien+Being · · Score: 5, Funny

    With Trend Micro, viruses are the least of your worries.

  5. Antivirus software on mission critical computers? by mferrier · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yet another example of why critical computer systems should be stripped down to the barebones tried-and-true software and isolated from any potential source of interference. This goes doubly for a system like this on which the local infrastructure depends!