Mcafee Associates Inc

McAfee Withdraws Bid for Cheyenne: McAfee Associates Inc. said it withdrew its proposal to acquire Cheyenne Software Inc. because of the latter's continuing rejection of its $1-billion bid. Roslyn Heights, N.Y.-based Cheyenne said it did not believe a merger of the two computer software makers would benefit it. The offer led to a dispute in which McAfee Chairman William Larson accused Cheyenne Chief Executive ReiJane Huai of publicly rejecting what had been private and friendly merger talks.

McAfee Associates Inc. sued rival software company Symantec Corp., alleging defamation and seeking $1 billion in damages. The action, which escalates a closely watched trade-secret battle between the two top suppliers of anti-virus software, is the latest volley involving two batches of software code that appear in two McAfee products, PC Medic 1997 and VirusScan. Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec sued Santa Clara, Calif.

McAfee Inc. last week released Rootkit Detective, a free tool to help computer users clean their machines of increasingly prevalent hidden malicious codes known as rootkits. Rootkits are used to hide nefarious programs on PCs, including ones that monitor every keystroke. They also can be used to hide an electronic backdoor that would let miscreants enter surreptitiously. Last year the number of rootkits that were identified stood at 3,284. This year the total has already surpassed 7,000.

McAfee Associates Inc. said in a preliminary results statement that its third-quarter earnings were 45 cents a share, just beating analysts' expectations, on sharply higher revenue from its anti-virus software. The Santa Clara-based software maker was expected to earn 44 cents a share in the third quarter, compared with 24 cents a share in the year-ago period.

McAfee Associates Inc. said it has won a contract worth more than $2 million to protect Defense Department computers from viruses, the largest contract the software maker has ever won. The Santa Clara-based company beat at least 16 other vendors for the deal to protect the world's largest institutional computer network, spokesman Mark Woodward said.

Symantec Corp. said it sued McAfee Associates Inc. in state court in San Jose, claiming it stole software code used to recover data from crashed computer disks. The suit accuses McAfee of stealing the computer code from Symantec's Norton CrashGuard product, which was released in September, and including it in McAfee's PC Medic product, released last month.

McAfee Associates Inc. said it agreed to buy a closely held Japanese developer of anti-virus software, Jade KK, for about $21 million in stock. The planned acquisition is Santa Clara-based McAfee's latest move to expand its presence in the lucrative Japanese information technology market, which is the world's second-largest market behind the U.S. Last month, the developer of computer network security and anti-virus software opened its first office in Japan.

McAfee Associates Inc. said Thursday that it will ask the Superior Court in San Jose to throw out Symantec Corp.'s copyright infringement lawsuit because the software code in question has no function. Symantec claimed in April that McAfee copied computer code from its product, Norton CrashGuard, used to recover data from crashed computer disks. Symantec amended its lawsuit in July to allege that McAfee stole more code than originally thought.

McAfee Inc., the No. 2 maker of anti-virus software, offered to pay a $50-million penalty to end a probe by U.S. regulators. The proposed settlement was worked out with the Securities and Exchange Commission staff and commissioners will vote on it soon, said Kent Roberts, general counsel of Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee. A portion of the $50 million may go to a shareholder compensation fund.

McAfee Inc.'s former top lawyer pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court in San Francisco to charges of stock options tampering in an alleged attempt to enrich himself at the expense of the computer security software maker's shareholders. A federal grand jury indicted Kent Roberts on Tuesday, nine months after McAfee fired him as its general counsel for improper handling of stock options issued in 2000 when the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company was known as Network Associates.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco on Tuesday indicted Kent Roberts, former general counsel at McAfee Inc., accusing him of fraud in connection with alleged backdating of stock options. Roberts is the third executive to be indicted in Silicon Valley's backdating scandal. Two former executives at San Jose-based Brocade Communications Systems Inc. were indicted last summer.

Microsoft Corp. said Monday that it had given Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. some of the information they wanted to make their security products work with Microsoft's new operating system, Vista. Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said the software interfaces for the Windows Security Center -- Vista's new "security dashboard" -- were uploaded to a website for software developers. Both security companies had complained that Redmond, Wash.

Security software company McAfee Inc. said Tuesday that it fired its chief lawyer in connection with employee stock option grants while several other companies reported further fallout from an expanding government probe of option practices. Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee said its board dismissed the company's general counsel, Kent Roberts, after an internal review found that he was involved in an improper option grant episode in 2000.

McAfee Inc., the No. 2 maker of anti-virus software, offered to pay a $50-million penalty to end a probe by U.S. regulators. The proposed settlement was worked out with the Securities and Exchange Commission staff and commissioners will vote on it soon, said Kent Roberts, general counsel of Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee. A portion of the $50 million may go to a shareholder compensation fund.

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former chief financial officer at McAfee.com Corp. with trying to defraud shareholders by exercising stock options in 2000, when he knew the financial statements were wrong. Evan Collins, 42, exercised 30,000 shares of Network Associates Inc., which had spun off McAfee and later repurchased the company, and sold them for a profit of about $250,000, the Justice Department charged in San Francisco federal court.

Antivirus company McAfee.com Corp. recommended its stockholders approve Network Associates Inc.'s $825-million bid for the 25% of McAfee not already owned by the network security firm. The latest offer represents a value of $17.18 a share based on Network Associates' price Friday. It's an 81% increase over the original offer made in March.

McAfee Inc. last week released Rootkit Detective, a free tool to help computer users clean their machines of increasingly prevalent hidden malicious codes known as rootkits. Rootkits are used to hide nefarious programs on PCs, including ones that monitor every keystroke. They also can be used to hide an electronic backdoor that would let miscreants enter surreptitiously. Last year the number of rootkits that were identified stood at 3,284. This year the total has already surpassed 7,000.

McAfee Inc., the No. 2 maker of antivirus software, said Chief Financial Officer Stephen Richards would retire Dec. 31. Richards, 50, who is also chief operating officer, wants to pursue other interests, the company said. He will receive a year's salary and bonus, plus an immediate right to his stock options and $3,000 a day as a consultant after his departure, McAfee said in a regulatory filing. Shares of Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee fell $1.27 to $18.51 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Antivirus company McAfee.com Corp. recommended its stockholders approve Network Associates Inc.'s $825-million bid for the 25% of McAfee not already owned by the network security firm. The latest offer represents a value of $17.18 a share based on Network Associates' price Friday. It's an 81% increase over the original offer made in March.