Sophos, the cybersecurity company, has officially apologized to users for a mistake in releasing the virus definition update for Inqtana-B that targets Mac OS X.
The virus definition update for Inqtana-B was released last Tuesday (February 21) and mistakenly identified some files from the Microsoft Office suite as infected. However, just two hours after discovering the faulty update, Sophos promptly issued a fix.
Nevertheless, for users who have enabled automatic virus detection, this erroneous update was indeed problematic, as it triggered continuous alerts, rendered MS Office inoperable, and forced users to reinstall the application suite.
A spokesperson for Sophos stated that the antivirus software does not automatically delete files without prior permission. Only a small number of Sophos customers were affected by this “mix-up.”
Errors in antivirus definition updates are not common occurrences. Sophos believes this was merely a risk associated with testing the company’s antivirus software on the Mac OS X platform. The company also indicated that it will implement changes to its testing processes to mitigate any risks in the future.
