Anti-virus hits vicars
Link: Anti-virus hits vicars
Symantec has been criticised, after a key piece of software used by churches all over the UK was targeted by Norton anti-virus and crippled.
The problem arose as Symantec - the anti-virus firm behind the Norton brand name - had found a file named “vlutils.dll” associted with a keylogging trojan, known as SniperSpy.
Unfortunately for many churches across the UK, they were using Visual Liturgy - released by Church House Publishing - which is used to plan sermons and other church services.
And Visual Liturgy also had a file named vlutils.dll, which a Symantec update in July promptly deleted - crippling use of the church planning software.
Symantec has now corrected the issue in an update.
However, Church House Publishing complained that the response from Symantec was slow, and that they were unable to get confirmation of when the correction would be released, causing unnecessary problems for their own users.
Overall, it’s a rare situation for anti-virus to target normal software accidentally. However, the damage could have been much worse if records and databases had been affected.
It comes as a salient reminder that you should always back-up your business files. After all, as vicars across the UK discovered, it’s not always the hackers or malicious users who can be a threat to your work.
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