Microsoft has cleared the issue which prevented people from sending work mails on Jan 1

The version checking that took place against the signature file was the main reason behind the malware engine crash

Tech giant Microsoft recently fixed a major bug that stopped people from sending work mails on Jan 1. Coinciding with New Year, millions of people worldwide were not able to receive emails due to the bug found in Microsoft Exchange servers. According to the tech giant, the hiccup was caused due to date check failure as there was a change in New Year. An official statement from Microsoft made it clear that the malfunction was not of the AV engine itself. Furthermore, the company added that the issue was not regarding malware engine or malware scanning, and overall the issue is in no way related to security.

The version checking that took place against the signature file was the main reason behind the malware engine crash. This resulted in the messages being stuck in transport queues. Microsoft has sorted out the issue, which caused the messages to be stuck on Exchange servers 2016 and 2019. A new solution was instantly created to deal with the problem caused due to the unexpected latent date issue, which led to signature files being scanned for malware within the Exchange Server. Microsoft completely supports the latest scanning engine, so an issue is not likely to arise for the foreseeable future.