McAfee, Trend Micro fixes security applications

McAfee and Trend Micro all confirmed yesterday that their anti-malware applications have deadly security flaws that could be exploited by hackers to kidnap or defeat users' PCs.

McAfee's faulty products include ePolicy Orchestrator security suite version 3.5.0, 3.6.0, 3.6.1 and ProtectionPilot version 1.1.1 and 1.5.0 security management software. The manufacturer yesterday also released an update that fixes these errors.

Security firm Symantec has warned that successful exploitation of the security flaws will allow hackers to gain the right to execute binary code on a system that makes a mistake. The exploit method is still to trick users into accessing a malicious website.

At the same time Trend Micro must also release an update to fix errors in the scan engine built into PC-cillin and Internet Security Suite. The manufacturer said that if it exploits a security error on the PC system that fails, it will stop working, Windows displays "blue screen of death".

iDefense evaluates this security error to an extremely dangerous level and says this error not only kills the security application but also the operating system. Most vulnerable are gateways that control data access because they have automatic data scanning.

Trend Micro has released an update to fix this deadly error.

Currently users of McAfee and Trend Micro products can use the automatic update feature to download necessary patches.

Security errors in malicious software are no longer a new news. Continuously in the past, big names in the world security village had to stand down when a series of loopholes in their products were discovered.

Hoang Dung