First published: 31st December 2007
On 13th December, a threat signature update released by Kaspersky Labs led to system instabilities and, rarely, to system failure on a small number of computers with Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0, Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 for Windows Workstations MP2 and MP3. Kaspersky rectified the problem the same day.
Days later, on 19th December, the anti-virus database released by Kaspersky included a false positive for an uncommon version of Windows Explorer (explorer.exe, not Internet Explorer, iexplore.exe). The program was detected as infected with Worm.Win32.huhk.c; depending on the configuration, Kaspersky Anti-Virus might quarantine, or, in the worst case, delete. the file. A database update fixing the problem was released within two hours. The falsely-detected explorer.exe version was released via the Microsoft Windows Update service as an Update for Windows XP on 24th July 2007.
Anti-virus software is complex and has to keep up with the large quantity of malware being released, so occasional quality problems with updates are to be expected. However, to have two within one week is... unfortunate. Kaspersky has apologised and said it will upgrade its testing.