A Kaspersky Labs anti-virus update blocked thousands of computers running Windows XP from accessing the Internet.
Both Internet access and internal network access was cut off after users installed an update to the Kaspersky Endpoint Security anti-virus software.
Complaints began to surface on the Kaspersky Lab Forum, with the first user writing: “I have ~12,000 machines running KES8 and my help desk started getting calls about an hour ago saying users were having problems accessing various web sites.”
This was soon followed by a wave of similar complaints, all from Windows XP users running the anti-virus software. Most of the reports came from business users, although personal users were also affected.
Kaspersky advised users experiencing problems to disable the anti-virus software, with a fix update being made available for both automatically updating systems and for download.
“Kaspersky Lab would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused by this database update error. Actions have been taken to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future,” a Kaspersky spokeswoman told IDG News Service.
