In what a blogging Symantec Sherlock Holmes called, "a case of human error," a diagnostic patch named PIFTS.exe was sent out "unsigned", causing firewalls to prompt the user for access to the Internet.
Spooked users trying to figure out if they'd been targetted by some kind of hack began bombarding Symantec message boards for information.
"The patch caused understandable concern for users," wrote Symantec's Dave Cole who complained that his message boards were then inundated.
"Within minutes, several dozen user accounts were created commenting on the initial thread, and/or creating new threads on the topic. Over the next few hours, over 200 user accounts were created," he said.
"Some posts contained no text in the body of the message, simply a subject:
O LAWD IM CHOKIN ON PIFTS PLZ HALP
"Within the first hour there were 600 new posts on the subject," said a harrassed Dave.
Things took an even spookier turn when Symantec then went into a frenzy of its own and having realised its cock-up, began deleting all mention of PIFTS.exe from its message boards.
That sent the tabloids into a frenzy.
Dave branded the miffed posters "spammers" although he said "there were no malicious links and it simply resulted in a widespread communications challenge for Symantec."
"Releasing a patch unsigned is an extremely rare occurrence ," he coughed.
Symantec aid it released the patch for "approximately" three hours to Norton Internet Security and Antivirus users on March 9, 2009.