A faulty signature update to CA's antivirus software created headaches for sys admins last week after the software falsely identified a Windows 2003 component as malware.

Win 2003 servers crashed and failed to reboot once the faulty (30.3.3054) update to CA's eTrust software was applied because the software wrongly flagged legitimate Lsass.exe files as the low-impact Lassrv-B Trojan.

CA acting promptly to issue a corrected update but not before a number of users were hit by the inadvertent error, the SANS Institute reports.

CA and Microsoft have both published advisories (here and here) explaining the steps sys admins needed to take in order to restore systems.

Lassrv-B, first identified on 24 August, is spreading in the wild, albeit modestly. The issue with CA's eTrust update was confined to Win 2003 users. CA users using other versions of Windows were left untouched by the problem. ®

Related stories

• Norton labels Nasa app as adware (17 July 2007)
• Comment Data modelling wars (2 January 2007)
• Norton smites ecclesiastical app (4 August 2006)
• MS anti-spyware labels Symantec as Trojan (14 February 2006)
• Critical Symantec bug hits 40 products (22 December 2005)
• Sophos glitch leaves PCs hanging (12 July 2005)
• Symantec false alert floors Macs (10 May 2005)
• McAfee AV ate my application (7 September 2004)
• Norton AV update rings false alarm bells (14 November 2001)