A faulty signature update to CA's antivirus software created headaches for sys admins last week after the software falsely identified a Windows 2003 component as malware.

Win 2003 servers crashed and failed to reboot once the faulty (30.3.3054) update to CA's eTrust software was applied because the software wrongly flagged legitimate Lsass.exe files as the low-impact Lassrv-B Trojan.

In default configurations, CA's software deleted the LSASS Windows Service component causing systems to lock-up

CA acting promptly to issue a corrected update but not before a number of users were hit by the inadvertent error, the SANS Institute reports.

CA and Microsoft have both published advisories (here and here) explaining the steps sys admins needed to take in order to restore systems.

Lassrv-B, first identified on 24 August, is spreading in the wild, albeit modestly. The issue with CA's eTrust update was confined to Win 2003 users. CA users using other versions of Windows were left untouched by the problem. ®

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