News CA anti-virus breaks Windows

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/07/10/ca-anti-virus-breaks-windows/1

A bug in the latest virus definitions for Computer Associates' range of anti-virus products left customers with important system files missing.

 

who the heck are CA, I've never heard of them till now.

 

the biggest piece of s**t software company that you will ever come across. they use to partner with IBM back in the day and after a series of large cock ups IBM stopped using them

 

Oh god, look at that box. Look at it. That thing is from hell. It is not of this earth. It was created by a software program, or a robot, because no human hands could ever have created something so absolutely, perfectly typical.

Let's go over this:

- White background
- Funny green pattern along the bottom, visually pleasing but not abrasive or distracting
- Bold, strong font, yet not aggressive or intimidating
- Photos of random people using their computers and looking happy
- Some attractive twenty-thirty-something woman, dressed in such a way as to be appealing to men, yet not offensive to other women, looking confident and assured that her computer is in good hands

My brain wants to kill itself.

Oh, and yeah, nice ****-up or whatever.

 

This particular sort of screw up seems to be getting more common - that reported issue with non-English AVG that broke Windows and I have experienced AVG deciding that essential system files were viruses after an update. Competition and choice are all well and good, but not at the cost of QA/checking.

 

They could at least provide something to automagically un-break the non virus files.
Lazy arses.

 

Xp sucks, lol. if this were Vista people would somehow find a way to blame vista.

 

you know you have a problem when the anti virus program does more damage then viruses themselves.

 

I have had to deal with CA .AVB problem many times. CA will intentionally rename executable files that you download to .AVB. Then you have to change explorer view so that you can actaully even see the hidden file extension and then rename it. A real pita and weird as hell if you are doing it over the phone with someone who can barely move a mouse.

 

Restitution to home users, not really needed, but I suppose if receipt and proper proof from 2ndary company, then sure, I don't see how someone with a receipt and documentation from a pc profesional couldn't force them to pay for pc repair services due to this snafu.

But ya, if they didn't have a command line tool or iso image that auto fixed the files, and updated the A/V, you bet I would bring the caps lock down on them.

 

CA never heard of them

 

ya I would like to know how this got passed too and why is effecting some XP users and not all, this is interesting to say the least. I never cared for CA products to begin with.

 

Didn't these people make Vet Anti virus? IIRC that program did nothing useful and never found viruses.

 

A perfect example of how bad the quality control around software engineering/development is. Compare software engineering with structural engineering: you wouldn't expect a large building to be designed without any thought of what each part will do and how it will interact with other parts it's connected to - it'd probably fall down pretty quickly and leave lots of very unhappy people.

 

True, but this issue isn't Windows moving the ground under the software... it's the software moving the ground under itself and every other bit of software on the computer. Fact is this error should never have been let past QC/A.

 

But doesn't that illustrate my point? Architects & engineers have to account for things like ground movement, subsidence, weather or any number of external factors which will have a drastic impact on their project. It's the same principle with building software: you have to try and think of every possible scenario and account for it. Obviously you can't account for everything; firstly it would be impossible to think of every possible scenario, but you run the risk of products languishing development hell with endless feature creep and never actually getting the product out (case in point: Duke Nukem Forever). But the purpose of effective testing, quality control, alpha/beta releases, etc is to anticipate problems that could occur and iron out as much as possible as early as possible. Where I work, we're given a rough rule of thumb: each time a code defect moves to the next stage of development (design, build, code test, QA test, user acceptance test, release), the cost to fix it increases tenfold. So something that would cost £1 to fix during code testing would cost £1000 to fix if it was present in the finished product.

In general, the lack of effective quality control is endemic throughout the software industry. Another recent blog post, and it's comments, lamented the fact that game developers often push products to market without having tested them properly; the resultant patches are often also poorly thought out and can sometimes break games. Those who have invested the money are too eager to see a ROI (return on investment) and often care little for the quality of the product: if it's out there and it's selling units, who cares if it's broken? It's making a profit and it can't be *that* bad because people are buying it.

I'm being very non-specific here, and probably tarring a lot of people with the same brush. Doubtless there are software houses out there that pride themselves on the quality of the product above all else. However if you look at the entire industry as a whole, that isn't generally the case. And it's not through the fault of the developers; their code is their bread and butter so it's only natural to want to do a good job, but there are other factors to consider when releasing a product (namely money).

It's a difficult balancing act to get it right, but clearly CA failed spectacularly here.

Heh... Spot the guy who works in software testing....

 

xp itself had nothing to do with this problem and yes vista has screwed up enough things it most likely
would have been blamed if this had happened in vista, lol !!