Hackers suck, McAfee Sucks Ass

<update> 4/21/2010: Wow McAfee really blew this time. McAfee devastates their install base with their own internally created kill Windows worm (here), wonder how many organizations will spend more time and money dealing with the fall-out from this “security update” than from an actual virus infection…

McAfee’s “DAT” file version 5958 is causing widespread problems with Windows XP SP3. The affected systems will enter a reboot loop and loose all network access. We have individual reports of other versions of Windows being affected as well. However, only particular configurations of these versions appear affected. The bad DAT file may infect individual workstations as well as workstations connected to a domain. The use of “ePolicyOrchestrator”, which is used to update virus definitions across a network, appears to have lead to a faster spread of the bad DAT file. The ePolicyOrchestrator is used to update “DAT” files throughout enterprises. It can not be used to undo this bad signature because affected system will lose network connectivity.

If you live in the Bay Area and travel on 101 you may have noticed a large McAfee billboard advertisement which states “Hackers are bad. We’re Bad Ass” – cute, if only their PR departments Jr. College marketing certificates had prepared them to deal with what is turning out to be a really, really bad week for little red.

First McAfee issues a warning to the SEC and investors that GPL software used in their products has put their business in jeopardy and “may result in unanticipated obligations regarding our products” (here) – You mean they do not want to adhere to their obligations or the GPL license terms? did they just realize they use open source tools or do they fear a lawsuit? Either way this is pretty damn far from bad ass

Second geeks.com, which is protected by the ever-vigilant and intimidating hacker safe logo, is hacked (here) resulting in the compromise of customer data and although this was known over a month ago the hacker safe logo still stands as a silent sentinel projecting the badassness of McAfee and assuring the general public of the security of the site. Now in McAfee’s defense they do not claim that Hacker Safe is 100% safe from hackers, they only claim it to be 99% safe, so clearly this hack was part of that anomalous 1%

Third a recent audit of McAfee E-Business server results in identification of a remotely exploitable code execution vulnerability (here), which can be easily exploited by sending a malformed packet (here). Since 2001 McAfee has had over 60 publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in everything from their virus scanners to Intercept to ePO to their common management agent – must be all that open source software. I thought these guys were supposed to be a bad ass security company – what’s up with that?

So 2008 is not starting out with the bang McAfee had hoped for, but never fear when you are as bad ass as McAfee you find a way to trudge on, I mean this is a company that has had to deal with patent infringement lawsuits (here), stock option scandals (here), accounting fraud charges (here), multiple SEC investigations (here), allegations of channel stuffing (here), highly visible software flaws (here), the loss of confidential and personal employee records (here), and of course that whole whiny school girl tirade they threw when Microsoft wanted to improve Windows Security by locking down the kernel (here) this doesn’t include the Bill Larsen/Network Associates years – and this is all in the face of AV dying – when you think about it that is kind of bad ass.

<update 9/22/2008: McAfee to acquire secure computing for about $460m, in doing so they essentially re-acquire all the stuff they jettisoned several years ago>

<update 7/22/2008: McAfee fined $18m in patent infringement lawsuit (here)- if this keeps up I am going to have to create a blog dedicated to nothing but McAfee suckiness>

<update 6/17/2008: For a company the size of McAfee there sure is a lot of controversy – apparently the Israeli business unit is under investigation for “irregularities” including grey-market activities with McAfee products (here)

<update 5/20/2008: Well it just keeps getting worse for little red, the company becoming synonymous with fraud, shady business practices and  poor security products. This time Brett Oliphant, the VP for Scan Alert – McAfee’s silly little Hacker Safe McAfee Safe product, is facing 11 counts of securities fraud in transactions that allegedly brought in more than US$1.215 million (here)>

<update 1/17/2008: Information week is reporting that at least 60 sites running “Hacker Safe” are found to be vulnerable to simple CSS (cross site scripting) attacks, including McAfee’s own scan alert website (here) – damn who’s watching their network? >