The Knucklehead of the Day award Part Five

Our fifth winner is McAfee Inc. They get the award for fixing a design flaw in some of its software but NOT telling some of its customers till yesterday.

McAfee issued a rare apology and urged customers to install updated versions of its software immediately. McAfee's antivirus software is used by more than one-third of corporations in the United States and Europe. A spokeswoman, Siobhan MacDermott, said there were no reports of victims.

The design flaw affects a component in McAfee's "ePolicy Orchestrator," used for managing security software on tens of thousands of computers across large organizations. The Defense Department announced last month it has selected the technology from Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee to run its computer-intrusion-prevention systems worldwide.

McAfee six months ago inadvertently repaired the flaw after an engineer made other changes to its software, said its chief security architect, John Viega. The flaw in McAfee's "common management agent" lets attackers in some cases seize control of computers to steal sensitive data, delete files or implant malicious programs.

"We didn't really realize we fixed the problem," Viega said. "We fixed one, but it was by accident."

This may sound funny to some but not to McAfee's customers. A company that treats its customers like this won't stay in business for long. McAfee Inc. is our fifth knucklehead of the day.

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