A "very unfortunate coincidence" when updating virus signatures and scanner software caused the free ClamWin (ClamAV for Windows) virus scanner to run amok and move large numbers of files into quarantine on Windows systems. On the ClamWin forum, various users reported that 25,000 files, including system files, were moved into quarantine as a result – more or less the entire system.

The flaw has reportedly been fixed, but some users are struggling to restore their systems. The ClamWin developers have produced a batch file that allows the files to be restored to their original locations, but the batch file uses the information stored in the ClamScanLog.text file to do so – and the log file has a size limit of 1 MByte. For some users, this potentially means that numerous file paths won't be listed, so they will have to manually restore the files to their original locations.

(crve)