ESET accidentally blocked .co.uk domains

ESET’s antivirus software blocked access to many websites with a .co.uk domain on Thursday. The software maker has released an update that resolves the false positive and recommends that users who are still experiencing problems restart their system.

Amazon.co.uk, the BBC’s and The Register’s websites, among others, were no longer accessible to users of the ESET software. They received a message that access to the website had been blocked. The bug may have marked all .co.uk domains as unsafe.

ESET recognized the problems around 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon and then started rolling back the virus definitions that caused the false report. An hour later, the issues are said to have been resolved, but some customers may still be affected. A reboot of the system should resolve this, ESET writes on its support website.

It is the second time in a short time that ESET has faced a false positive that affects many users. At the end of February, certain commonly used javascripts were incorrectly identified as a trojan.