McAfee reimburses their bug until the 31st of May

Home uses and independent victims of McAfee’s defective update have until the end of the month to claim reimbursement for the cost of any computer work required after the installation of the update. These users will also be provided with a subscription extension.

At the end of April, McAfee made a small mistake which created a lot of noise. The security solutions provider published a defective DAT file with the consequences being that the antivirus suite detected a false positive which lead to "a certain number" of Windows XP being affected.

Windows generic svchost.exe process (Service Host Process) which is used to execute services from a DLL file, was detected as being infected by VirusScan, with the file then being put into quarantine. For those who rebooted their computer before McAfee published a correction to the problem, their system would continually reboot, leading to the system having to be reinstalled…

Due to this false positive, McAfee’s president apologised, while assuring users that they had "implemented additional assurance and quality protocols for all releases which have a direct impact on the critical files system". McAfee also promised, without providing details of how this would be implemented, that a reimbursement for any required works would be paid.

It has today been announced what steps users should follow. This concerns home users and independent users who are seeking a reimbursement for all costs incurred for the reparation of a damaged system. Users seeking such compensation will have to complete a dedicated form which will also provide them with a subscription extension of two years.

Affected users should be careful to not take their time, as McAfee has only made this offer available until the 31st of May 2010.