Computer Associates E-Trust EZ Antivirus Blew It Today

[Wonderboy]

On the day before the big Kama-Sutra invasion, Computer Associates appears
to have "turned off" the real time virus protection to scores of its
customers by "accidentally" sending out the wrong virus signature files.
What a crock! They got hacked and are afraid to admit it. What anti-virus
company would be dumb enough to send out the wrong signature files a day
before a major attack is planned. Admit it Computer Associates--- someone
hacked your program. What a disgrace.

 

[Befunge Sudoku]

On the day before the big Kama-Sutra invasion, Computer Associates appears
to have "turned off" the real time virus protection to scores of its
customers by "accidentally" sending out the wrong virus signature files.
What a crock! They got hacked and are afraid to admit it. What anti-virus
company would be dumb enough to send out the wrong signature files a day
before a major attack is planned. Admit it Computer Associates--- someone
hacked your program. What a disgrace.

well...
Everybody's had detection for Nyxem for a couple of weeks at
least. So the "day before" stuff is irrelevant.
Major attack? You only get it by running an attachment to a
mail offering you porn. It's not going to hit many people, most
of whom (dare I say it?) deserve it.
Major attack (2) ? Quite a lot of other viruses have come out
in the last few days, all of them capable of messing up
people's machines quite well enough.

We used the media hype to panic our users into checking their
av is actually working. We haven't had any reports of Nyxem
hits but we've found a few misconfigured systems. So it's all
worked out rather well here. SO FAR.

 

[George S.]

I think you may have missed the earlier posts. It's not that people could
not update the Computer Associates AV program--- it's what happened when
they did--- the update SHUT DOWN the real-time protection on their systems.
Many systems were left unprotected. I see this as a real debacle for a
company like Computer Associates. I think they got hacked, but their
"official" explanation is that somehow they got sloppy with their servers,
which apparantly were sending out the wrong update files. A major boo-boo
for any computer security giant--- a major BLUNDER for Computer Associates
one day before the Kama-Sutra virus was scheduled to commence.

 

[Befunge Sudoku]

@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>, (e-mail address removed)
says...

I think you may have missed the earlier posts. It's not that people could
not update the Computer Associates AV program--- it's what happened when
they did--- the update SHUT DOWN the real-time protection on their systems.
Many systems were left unprotected. I see this as a real debacle for a
company like Computer Associates. I think they got hacked, but their
"official" explanation is that somehow they got sloppy with their servers,
which apparantly were sending out the wrong update files. A major boo-boo
for any computer security giant--- a major BLUNDER for Computer Associates
one day before the Kama-Sutra virus was scheduled to commence.

Oh, yes, that's bad - but it's not specifically Nyxem-related.
It just happened to happen at the same time.

 

[Vanguard]

On the day before the big Kama-Sutra invasion, Computer Associates appears
to have "turned off" the real time virus protection to scores of its
customers by "accidentally" sending out the wrong virus signature files.
What a crock! They got hacked and are afraid to admit it. What
anti-virus
company would be dumb enough to send out the wrong signature files a day
before a major attack is planned. Admit it Computer Associates--- someone
hacked your program. What a disgrace.

This isn't a new problem. I've been using EZ since around last August and
this was the 4th time it disabled itself. Once I was able to disable all
options, reboot, reenable all options, reboot, and then it was all active
again. It wasn't because of its tray icon that I noticed the failure but
because the Windows security center popped up a warning about no virus
protection. I got rid of EZ and went with something else. It's bad enough
that I had to use ProcessGuard to ensure malware wouldn't turn off the AV
program but even that cannot prevent it from turning itself off.

 

[Charlie]

Well now let's hear from the resident E-Trust EZantivirus cheerleader...

Take it Heather......

 

[George S.]

Hi Charlie and all--

I happen to like E-trust and have been with them since the Innoculate-It
days. But I have to agree with most of the posters that they picked some
time to go belly-up. It's a real black-eye for them--- the one thing we
were all trying to prevent was worms and virus programs from turning off our
protection and what happens??? Computer Associates sloppy program does that
instead!!! How do we say it here--- with friends like Computer Associates,
you don't need enemies!

Well now let's hear from the resident E-Trust EZantivirus cheerleader...

Take it Heather......

 

[emtech]

I happen to like E-trust and have been with them since the
Innoculate-It days. But I have to agree with most of the posters
that they picked some time to go belly-up. It's a real black-eye
for them--- the one thing we were all trying to prevent was worms
and virus programs from turning off our protection and what
happens??? Computer Associates sloppy program does that instead!!!
How do we say it here--- with friends like Computer Associates, you
don't need enemies!

The timing was damned unfortunate, but the people in this thread
who are screaming about CA having been "hacked" don't have a clue
what they're talking about. Some programmer just plain forgot to
direct requests for the sig files from the former engine's
/pub/myeTrust/autodownload/sigs/ to the new location of
/pub/myeTrust/autodownload/7/sigs/ . A couple of keystrokes make
all the difference between getting a workable 2xxx sig file and a
no longer usable 9xxx file.

--
emtech

"Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only
be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up
before, and it has always been due to human error."
- HAL9000, "2001: A Space Odyssey"

 

[George S.]

Well, every cloud has a silver lining. Let's hope that they clean up their
act a bit to prevent these kinds of things from reoccurring. I've also
emailed them about their website--- it's a pretty chaotic place and you
really do have to go digging and hunting around for some of the stuff you
might be looking for. It's been a while since I needed to go there---
perhaps they will also do some housekeeping on their site to tidy that end
of things up.

 

[emtech]

I've also emailed them about their website--- it's a pretty chaotic
place and you really do have to go digging and hunting around for
some of the stuff you might be looking for.

Ya *think*? ;^)

You're absolutely right; the tech stuff is buried under all of the
sales gimmicks.

 

[Vanguard]

Ya *think*? ;^)

You're absolutely right; the tech stuff is buried under all of the
sales gimmicks.

At one time, CA was sending out spoofed spam where they pretended to be
sending from Tiger Direct (to buy PestPatrol). After contacting Tiger
Direct who probably didn't like CA spamming under their name, that stopped.
CA is a publisher, not a developer, and it definitely shows in their
handling and support of their products.

 

[lynnedurham]

Can anyone here help a gal new to this newsgroup?

This week's CA EZ AV debacle was the last straw for me with this
product. I've had trouble with the product three times in the past few
months. As someone mentioned, their support Web site is lousy --
difficult to find what you need and once you think you've found it,
it's poorly written, convoluted or difficult to understand. Fixing one
"problem" may require one to follow four or five links AFTER finding
the correct "solution."

Additionally, their support folks have been less than helpful in the
past, too. I just don't have time for these headaches.

So I've decided to dump the program even though I have three months
left on my current license.

Unfortunately, the program doesn't seem to *want* to be dumped. I've
tried every uninstall procedure that I know and each one fails with
message:

ERROR: Unable to terminate active antivirus application.

So. Even though EZAV isn't truly running (it says my license is expired
when it isn't, I've tried following their fix with no luck) I cannot
uninstall the dratted thing.

Does anyone have any ideas on my next steps?

Thank you so much in advance.

Lynne

 

[John and Pat]

Have you tried to uninstall in safe mode? Also try this page for help..

http://www.trap17.com/index.php/etrust-ez-antivirus-2005-uninstallation_t26130.html

Regards,
John O.

 

[lynnedurham]

John, thank you *so* much for taking the time to respond.

The safe mode idea worked like a charm. I've now installed the NOD 32
trial as that seems to have good feedback around these parts.

Once again, thank you for your help.

Best,

Lynne

 

[George S.]

I have to agree that it is time to start hunting around for a new AV
application. Not being able to update is one thing, but when the f*&(*n
program goes ahead and shuts down your virus protection altogether, it's
a --major blunder--, not just a normal CA debacle. Folks who spent hours
trying to troubleshoot CA's problem should somehow be rewarded with an extra
six months of license time. (Those that are keeping the program, that is.)
This kind of SLOPPY program handling is a big turnoff and the folks at
Computer Associates should hang their heads in shame.

 

[John and Pat]

Glad to help out!

Regards,
John O.