Some of you may have noticed that Sparrow Chat was ‘down’ for a few hours this morning. It all began when one of the computers showed a virus alert, and the CA security software rapidly deleted five files, but left one infected on the hard drive.
Following a virus scan, thirteen more files were found to be infected, and were automatically deleted. A number of them were WordPress files.
On checking Sparrow Chat, I discovered certain sections of WordPress Admin were inoperable and the sidebar modules had disappeared.
Eventually, I discovered the problem was not with WordPress, but with the Firefox browser. Using IE7 I was able to rebuild the sidebar modules and get Sparrow Chat back online.
This all took a couple of hours during which I also deleted Firefox and reinstalled it, to no avail. It still threatened to wreak havoc with the sidebar modules.
Knowing I had an infected file on the hard drive I went online to find some information about the virus – JS/Snz.A.
Imagine my surprise when the CA website knew nothing about it? Further investigation revealed the latest virus software update patch from CA, released this morning, contained a bug causing the software to recognize certain Javascripts as viruses.
There never was a virus, but CA’s anti-virus software had systematically deleted a host of files containing the offending Javascript, some of which were needed to run WordPress Admin with Firefox.
Reinstalling Firefox didn’t solve the problem, but clearing out the cache, did.
So, a very special thanks to the people at CA Security for their cock-up, which wasted hours of my time, and no doubt that of millions of other users of their products.
CA employees must have been celebrating New Year a little early this year, as they were undoubtedly drunk at their work in the office this morning.
Filed under: Not nuclear, thank God