A malware signature update issued by the Webroot antivirus on Monday triggered the software into mistakenly flagging Windows system files as malware, melting down millions of managed systems around the world.

Many independent tweets confirmed that several major websites, including Bloomberg and Facebook, were also marked as phishing sites, preventing users from accessing their pages.

Security commentator SwiftOnSecurity tweeted that the Webroot issue was only live for 13 minutes, but the company’s efforts to remediate the problem were getting stalled due to the sheer volume of clients requiring a fix.

The company, which claims to have more than 30 million users, has so far suggested fixes for the Home edition and its Business edition software, but the company has yet to offer anything universal or concrete for its entire affected user base at the time of writing.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/webroot-antivirus-mistakenly-flags-windows-system-files-as-malware/