Antivirus against blue death

Applying one of Microsoft's February security updates can cause certain infected Windows XP machines to crash with blue death. The good news is that the malware is detected by several antivirus products -- among them those of VirusBuster.

As it has been widely reported in the press, updating systems with the MS10-015 bulletin can cause machines to lock up when restarted before falling into a never-ending reboot loop. The problem is caused by an infection, which proved to be far from isolated, though it's fortunately not commonplace either. VirusBuster's customers haven't reported any cases yet.

Experts of the Hungary-based specialist of IT security point out that users with appropriate, up-to-date antivirus software have no reason to worry about the patch. "In fact, the problem is caused by a whole malware family, rather than one single malicious program. Malcreants release new variants all the time. Ironically, a variant which is compatible with the MS10-015 patch has also hit the net. VirusBuster's software detects most variants as Rootkit.Alureon.Gen. Our customers working with up-to-date antivirus software can safely install the Microsoft patch", says Gábor Szappanos, the head of VirusBuster's virus lab.

Source: VirusBuster.