F-Secure Mac beta throws a tanty and trashes files falsely

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 17 March 2011 07:54

Business IT - Security

Some F-Secure Mac Protection beta testers got a nasty surprise the other day when a rogue update started trashing legitimate files.

On Monday, F-Secure released a database update for its Mac Protection technology preview that falsely identified exploits in various browser-related files and moved them to the Trash, causing programs such as Safari, Firefox and Chrome to fail.

Things quickly got worse for users who assumed their systems had been infected and carried out a full scan, as that moved even more files to the Trash - all that were scanned, according to some reports, though F-Secure officials said that only "several" files were affected.

F-Secure released another database update on the same day that fixed the underlying problem, but left affected users with systems that were not fully functional.

The company advised that restoring from a backup was the best approach. Given the inclusion of Time Machine in Leopard and Snow Leopard, the existence of various other backup tools, and the low cost of hard drives (less than $100 per terabyte), it is hard to see why anyone would not have a backup regime in place whether or not they are in the habit of running beta software.

But for those who didn't, F-Secure released a tool designed to restore the trashed files by consulting the system log and the database of detected infections. Unfortunately for some, that tool was not 100% successful. One user claimed it failed to move "tens of thousands" of files to the correct homes.

The story's not over - please read on.