Sophos customers hit by false positive

Customers experiencing issues today after an update from the vendor classified itself as a virus

Sophos partners were fielding calls from perplexed customers this morning after the security vendor experienced a "serious" false positive yesterday.

The vendor last night published an update that classified itself as the Shh/Updater-B virus on customers' Windows systems.

Sophos confirmed today that, although the underlying cause had been fixed, customers are still experiencing issues as a result of the episode.

The vendor said its support and engineering teams are treating it with "the utmost urgency", stressing that it will continue to update its Knowledgebase Article as it learns more.

"Our sales and channel teams are also reaching out proactively to key accounts," it added.

Paul Prior, managing director of Sophos partner Foursys, claimed the VAR had received several customer calls this morning, but praised the vendor's response.

"In the scheme of things, it is not that serious. Every security company with a large enough customer base will inevitably experience these situations, but Sophos is dealing with it incredibly well," he said.