A bug in a Zone Labs update caused the popular ZoneAlarm firewall to crash late Thursday for about 50,000 users of ZoneAlarm Pro and ZoneAlarm Security Suite products.
"The majority of customers who experienced the crashes were in Asia, due to the fact it was morning there when the update was first made available to users who were starting up their PCs", said Gregor Freund, general manager of Zone Labs. "Around 50,000 users experienced crashes", he added. About three million people use ZoneAlarm Pro and ZoneAlarm Security Suite worldwide, according to ZoneLabs.
The faulty update was made available at around 4 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday. Zone Labs finally discovered the bug after customers began reporting crashes. The problem was replicated in Zone Labs" security lab and was fixed within five hours, according to a news posting on the Zone Labs Web site.
The bug only affected the commercial ZoneAlarm Pro and the Security suite. The free ZoneAlarm firewall does not have the Program Advisior feature, and so it was not affected.