Panda Labs updated its signature file for its antivirus product this week, and really dotted all the I’s and crossed the T’s—to the point of detecting its own self as malicious.
“Issue with the signature file of 11 March 2015 that might have affected our PCOP and Retail 2015 customers,” the Spanish security firm said in an advisory. “This issue may have caused some files to be moved to quarantine.”
Complaints from IT departments flooded the vendor as users received persistent error messages. Panda pushed a fix and urged users to install it, but the efficacy has yet to be determined.
"The update has not really worked,” one user told ITWeb, noting that 20% of his company’s machines were affected. “Impact on productivity has been severe, as some departments have no computers to work on. Data has luckily not been affected adversely as yet. We are going to review our antivirus tomorrow as our subscriptions are expiring at the end of the month and we most probably will not renew at this stage."
For its part, Panda issued a statement to media, noting that since the signature file has been fixed, the problem should not reoccur:
"Panda Security has deployed an automated solution for all the products affected [and] a manual tool has been published…We have reviewed all the certification processes and have put [in place] all needed measures to avoid this happening again."
The company is not alone in these types of auto-immune issues. In the past, other vendors have suffered similar problems.