Lenovo Allegedly Installing "Superfish" Proxy Adware On New Computers

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 19, 2015 @01:47AM from the hey-man-you're-s'posed-to-join-the-nsa-first dept.

An anonymous reader writes It looks like Lenovo has been installing adware onto new consumer computers from the company that activates when taken out of the box for the first time. The adware, named Superfish, is reportedly installed on a number of Lenovo's consumer laptops out of the box. The software injects third-party ads on Google searches and websites without the user's permission. Another anonymous reader points to this Techspot article, noting that that it doesn't mention the SSL aspect, but this Lenovo Forum Post, with screen caps, is indicating it may be a man-in-the-middle attack to hijack an SSL connection too. It's too early to tell if this is a hoax or not, but there are multiple forum posts about the Superfish bug being installed on new systems. Another good reason to have your own fresh install disk, and to just drop the drivers onto a USB stick. Also at ZDnet.

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Re:All the more reason... by thieh · 2015-02-19 02:06 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Time to ditch the dark side (windows).
Re:Glad I Cancelled My Lenovo Order by hey! · 2015-02-19 02:25 · Score: 1, Offtopic

I've had bad luck with Toshiba laptops in terms of durability and Linux support. In particular the ACPI DSD tables on Toshibas that I've had detect non-Windows operating systems and *deliberately* disable certain hardware like sound. It's fixable, but a PITA, adding extra steps every time you do a kernel upgrade.
For years IBM then Lenovo was my choice for build quality, but I guess from here on out I'm sticking with Apple. I'm very pleased with the hardware.

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