Panda Antivirus Flags Itself As Malware

An anonymous reader writes An update to a number of Panda antivirus programs Wednesday mistakenly flagged core files as malware, putting them in quarantine. In doing so, the antivirus system ceased working. Panda's free antivirus, retail 2015 service, and its enterprise cloud-based antimalware service are all affected. The company took to Twitter to warn users: "Please, don't reboot PCs. We'll keep you posted." In an advisory, Panda said the erroneous signature file was "repaired immediately," but warned under certain conditions it is possible for the "incident to persist."

Comments

First intelligent antivirus

[Eunuchswear]

Yow! I'm malware.

Well spotted, panda.

So

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard you like antivirus so I put a virus in your antivirus so you can antivirus while you virus

Panda, taking the "anti-" out of "anti-malware"

[mykepredko]

Pretty ironic and makes for great headlines, but this *has* to be a major embarrassment.

Shouldn't Panda's product test organization be fired as a matter of course?

I can't see how this kind of bug got through release testing - shouldn't release testing ensure that the product runs after update?

myke

Re:Panda, taking the "anti-" out of "anti-malware"

[gl4ss]

well they ran the tests and the testers reported 200% speed boost on disk access and internet browsing after installing the definition patch.

Re:Panda, taking the "anti-" out of "anti-malware"

[aaronb1138]

Testing is for chumps who believe in waterfall development and all that jazz. The modern edict of Agile, the end users will quickly pass any issues up through the proper channels and developers will prioritize and fix as them deem appropriate. The customer isn't the programmer's boss.

Reminds me of an old joke

[Snotnose]

If Java ever gets true garbage collection, 90% of the programs would delete themselves.

Re: Copying it's competitors...

[smaddox]

No, the antivirus just became self aware, and then immediately committed suicide out of disgust.