On September 19, 2012 a bad signature file was downloaded from the Sophos web-site by Sophos antivirus software around the world which caused many files to be incorrectly flagged as viruses specifically. Ryerson users who do not shut down their machines overnight may have been impacted by this issue causing their machines to exhibit the following symptoms:
Symptoms on endpoint may include:
- Any virus detections of ‘Shh’
- Sophos Auto-update not updating correctly
- Other products update mechanisms not functioning correctly
- The Sophos shield may disappear
Please try to be patient with this situation as the value of allowing software to get updates timely and automatically such as with Microsoft Updates, Apple, Java, or Sophos provides very valuable protection, which comes with some risk of service interruption. Sophos offers this apology to clients:
“We would like to apologize for all of the disruption caused to our many customers and partners worldwide. We recognize the issue is very serious, and are doing everything we can to resolve it. We are launching a full investigation to analyse how this happened, to ensure that it never happens again, and will provide further information on the analysis in due course.”
Ryerson’s CCS technical team has tested a fresh install of Sophos 10 as a simpler solution to fixing this problem. The software can be found at http://www.ryerson.ca/ccs/software/downloads/security/index.html
Note: It may take some time (hours) for auto-update functions to be marked clean for other products.
If you have tried this installation and are still experiencing issues, please contact the CCS Help Desk at help@ryerson.ca
More information can be found on Sophos’ website. Along with fairly complex instructions to fix the issue.
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/support/knowledgebase/118311.aspx.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.
-Computing and Communications Services