14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday Symantec delivered an antivirus update that caused havoc on a number of Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers, as Internet Explorer was no longer working after applying the package.
In a statement released today, Symantec confirms that the problem was entirely caused by a corrupt antivirus definition update but says that only few users were actually impacted by this error.
The company points out that only 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer were broken down because of the update but adds that the buggy update was delivered to most of its security products, including Norton Internet Security, Norton 360, and Norton Security.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 users affected
While Symantec hasn't provided any details on the Internet Explorer versions that were actually affected by the corrupt virus definition update, user reports reveal that IE9 and newer were all broken down.
This means that the issue was spotted on Windows 7 and Windows 8 and users confirmed that Internet Explorer 11 was impacted from the very same problems. It's not yet clear if Windows 10 was affected too, as the number of users running the Technical Preview build and Norton security products is probably very small.
Symantec says that all customers experiencing issues with Internet Explorer should update their antivirus solutions as soon as possible, as a patch has already been released. This patch should automatically be deployed on all machines, it said, but in case IE still fails to launch, manually checking for updates could help.
“Based on our analysis, the issue was caused by a corrupt file in the virus definition set. Symantec recreated a snapshot of the same definition package as 20150221.001 and released it through our LiveUpdate servers,” the security vendor said.
Internet Explorer is currently the world's leading desktop browser, according to data provided by Net Applications, with a market share of 57 percent. Internet Explorer 11 is also the number one version, while versions 8 and 9 are following up closely.