Kaspersky update zaps Microsoft antivirus

Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab have recovered from an error that caused significant e-mail troubles for some users of Microsoft's Antigen e-mail security software.

Antigen users started receiving updates for their Kaspersky Lab antivirus engine again on Tuesday. Microsoft and Kaspersky had put those on hold after a flawed update caused trouble last week, representatives for the companies said Tuesday.

"As far as both parties are concerned, the problems have been addressed, and it's business as usual," said Steve Orenberg, president of Kaspersky's North American operations.

The problems left some people without fully functional e-mail systems for as long as 10 hours. The culprit was a routine update to the Kaspersky antivirus engine, which was distributed early Thursday morning. In the afternoon of that day, Microsoft offered the previous version of the engine for download to solve the problem.

"As soon as we were aware that our customers were experiencing e-mail problems due to the Kaspersky update, we escalated through the appropriate channels across Kaspersky and Microsoft and were able to define, test and provide a resolution," the Microsoft representative said in a statement.

Antigen, which Microsoft acquired when it bought Sybari, uses multiple antivirus engines. The product is used by about 10,000 organizations, a "small percentage" of which use the Kaspersky engine, the Microsoft representative said.

While halting the update for the Kaspersky engine for several days meant that one engine wasn't refreshed, users were still protected by the other engines and revamps. Antigen can scan e-mail with up to five engines at the same time, according to the Microsoft Web site.

Microsoft recently announced a new beta test version of Antigen.

[tech_junky]

Kaspersky sucks...

I had a Kasperky trial on a machine once - the trial ran out so I switched to Avast and tried to remove Kasperky so Avast could run all of it's types of scanning, but I never have been able to get Kaspersky off all the way, and so Avast still cant run all scanners on that machine...

[rcrusoe]

Re: Kaspersky sucks. So What doesn't?

Name one AV that doesn't, to some extent. Really.

Every few years I test most of the AV products that I can find then select two vendors. One to scan email at the servers, another for desktops. (I believe you need a "belt and suspenders" approach to security when you support Windows.)

They all have their problems, although lately I've found AVG to be one of the better behaving of the commercial breed. And ClamAV, an open source product, does well on servers. RAV was my favorite for email servers until MS purchased the company and took it off the market.

So, any admins out there have a favorite they'd like to recommend?

[Junger01]

Kaspersky

You may need to remove this regkey if Kaspersky was monitoring Exchange

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\VirusScan

[heystoopid]

Superior to others though!

It's far superior to that symantec rootkit variety, and as for McFee, it's update is a true pain and annoyance of several magnitudes!

Oh well, we live in an imperfect world and we make our choices accordingly!

[Michael Grogan]

Try Avast

It's free, effective and totally innocuous.