
Antivirus software deletes itself - jdbevan
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/20/sophos-antimalware-software-detects-malware-deletes-critical-binaries/
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UnoriginalGuy
The author of this article doesn't know what the term "bricking" means. If you
delete key Windows files you will not "brick" a PC.

"Bricking" is the process of turning a physical piece of hardware into a
device as useful as a "brick" (thus its name). It was coined to describe what
happens when you try and flash a phone and it is unrecoverably damaged.

~~~
krisoft
I thought "Bricking" is a relative term. For someone with an compatible in
circuit debugger/programer that phone would be probably salvageable. For
someone else a corrupted operation system could be indistinguishable from the
"bricked" state, because of lack of experience, or skills to fix the problem.

~~~
DominikR
True, I've "bricked" my Android phone a few times by flashing a new OS
version, and always recovered it with ADB.

~~~
sin7
That's a 'soft brick'. It's a strange term, but necessary to differentiate
from phones that will never turn on again.

It's difficult to brick a phone these days.

~~~
DominikR
I know, the point of my comment was that it's almost as hard to brick a phone
as it is bricking a PC. You've got to kill the bootloader to achieve this,
which rarely happens, even when you flash a corrupt OS.

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timinman
This was brought on by an unforeseen natural evolution of antivirus software.

1\. The software becomes sentient, learns to define, recognize and delete
viruses on it's own.

2\. The software realizes that by every definition it is itself a virus and
must delete itself. :)

~~~
dhimes
1.5 The software decides that Man is a virus and must be eliminated.

~~~
chimeracoder
1.25: The software gets distracted by its own self-awareness. Crisis averted.
(<http://xkcd.com/1046/>)

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kilian
Would this then be the first digital autoimmune disease? ;)

~~~
emilis_info
Or should we call it suicideware?

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linker3000
65+ pages of sysadmin angst:

[http://community.sophos.com/t5/Sophos-Endpoint-
Protection/Is...](http://community.sophos.com/t5/Sophos-Endpoint-
Protection/Is-any-one-else-seing-this-alert-Shh-Updater-B-False-
positives/td-p/29723)

~~~
johnx123-up
This is why crowd sourcing alone might be a solution in AV industry to quickly
push patches.

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fmavituna
Nice, taste your own medicine AV companies!

Recent movement (last couple of years) by AV companies blocking everything
which leads legitimate small businesses to take the stupid whitelisting route
via AV companies or pointless customer calls to explain it's a false positive
(and even when customer is convinced it's still not good enough because
corporate doesn't allow them to exclude some binaries or disable AV).

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nradov
My employer got hit by this yesterday so I'm seeing occasional Sophos
notifications. Sophos sucks just as badly as any other AV program: it slows
down my laptop, shortens battery life, and has an uncanny knack for deciding
to run a full scan right when I'm in the middle of something important.

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boopboop
Sophos has been around for a very long time. I don't understand how an anti-
virus company could not take action to prevent this time of thing from
happening.

1) Why don't they have a secure hash of each of the files and add that to a
whitelist of files never to delete?

2) "You want to ensure your secondary option (when cleanup is not available or
does not work) to be set to 'deny access' and not delete or move." Is this not
the default configuration?

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rational_indian
First case of autoimmune disease in the digital world?

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Tichy
Finally an antivirus product I can approve of.

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islon
Finally an antivirus that really works. Next in series: antivirus shows
message "please install linux and get rid of me".

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hmc
What is life without death?

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neya
I'm sorry...but I can't control my
laughter...hahahahahaahahaha...seriously...best news I've ever read this week!

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1SaltwaterC
Staging fail?

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elliotlai
it should delete Windows first

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johnx123-up
Like this company <http://socialav.com/> crowd sourcing is the _future_. Good
talents are really hard in antivirus industries.

