Trend Micro Issues Bug Alert

The bug was in an antispam update, called Rule #915, to Trend Micro eManager, an e-mail content security product that provides content filtering, spam blocking and reporting, said a spokesman at Trend Micro, based here.

Rule #915, released Tuesday, contained a routine that quarantined all incoming e-mail containing the letter P. Trend Micro discovered the bug soon after releasing Rule #915 and issued Rule #916 to fix it an hour and a half later.

The eManager product is unrelated to Trend Micro's antivirus software or its Spam Prevention Service (SPS), which was released in March, the spokesman said.

The number of U.S. customers reporting the flawed update is low--in the "double digits," he said.

"We wanted to be as open as possible about this," he said. "In the United States, customers have been contacted directly via e-mail, and we've notified the reseller channel."

Customers who installed the flawed Rule #915 should download and install Rule #916 immediately, the vendor said. Customers can learn how to recover e-mails that were inadvertently quarantined by the flawed update by calling Trend Micro or by going to the Knowledge Base on Trend Micro's Web site and searching for Solution ID number 14638.