Hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide were taken out by a McAfee security update that ended up disabling Windows XP based computers. Per CNET, “The damage was widespread: the University of Michigan's medical school reported that 8,000 of its 25,000 computers crashed. Police in Lexington, Ky. resorted to hand writing reports and turned off their patrol car terminals as a precaution. Some jails canceled visitation, and Rhode Island hospitals turned away non-trauma patients at emergency rooms and postponed some elective surgeries.
After first claiming that the incident only affected “less than one half of one percent of our enterprise accounts,” McPherson issued this response on his blog, which many did not consider an apology: “Mistakes happen. No excuses. The nearly 7,000 employees of McAfee are focused right now on two things…help our customers…and make sure we put the processes in place so this never happens again.” Whether that will be enough to assuage their customers remains to be seen.
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