An error within the virus definition file for McAfee's antivirus software marked several Microsoft Office components, some Adobe product applications, and several other programs as viruses. Depending on the settings, these files would be either quarantined or deleted. The update was released Friday, and by the afternoon the company was made aware of the issue after it began receiving unusually high reports of the virus known as W95/CTX. By the evening, McAfee had pushed an update to its servers to fix the problem.
McAfee was mistakenly marking excel.exe and graph.exe, two Office components, Adobe's AdobeUpdateManager.exe, and several other applications as containing the virus.
