:: Deepquest ::

Some 3Com customers using TippingPoint intrusion prevention appliances found themselves with trouble on their hands last week; the company says the problem lay in the now-patched software.

Mysterious Web attack traffic caused some of 3Com Corp.’s TippingPoint IPS devices to crash last week, requiring a hasty patch by the company.

Some TippingPoint customers had their IPS (intrusion prevention system) appliances crash while trying to process a specific kind of Internet attack traffic last week.

The company learned of the problem on Friday and issued an update for the TOS (TippingPoint OS) software within hours, said Laura Craddick, TippingPoint’s public relations manager.

“A bug in the TippingPoint engine caused high CPU utilization?on a few of our customers’ Internet-facing devices,” Craddick wrote in an e-mail response to questions from eWEEK. The bug affected TippingPoint devices running TippingPoint OS 2.1 and 2.2, she wrote.

At York University in Toronto, TippingPoint IPS devices began crashing repeatedly on Friday, Jan. 13, prompting a call to the vendor, said Ramon Kagan of the University’s Computing and Network Services department.

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