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Lenovo To Wipe Superfish Off PCs
An anonymous reader send news from the Wall Street Journal, where Lenovo CTO Peter Hortensius said in an interview that the company will roll out a software update to remove the Superfish adware from its laptops. "As soon as the programmer is finished, we will provide a tool that removes all traces of the app from people’s laptops; this goes further than simply uninstalling the app. Once the app-wiping software is finished tonight or tomorrow, we’ll issue a press release with information on how to get it." When asked whether his company vets the software they pre-install on their machines, he said, "Yes, we do. Obviously in this case we didn't do enough. The intent of loading this tool was to help enhance our users’ shopping experience. The feedback from users was that it wasn’t useful, and that’s why we turned it off. Our reputation is everything and our products are ultimately how we have our reputation."
I will guarantee you that this particular 'update' will only take care of the core OS infection. If you have FF, Opera, or Thunderbird, do not expect this to work. You're stuck fixing those programs and their cert stores on your own.
I wouldn't trust Lenovo, anyways. They can't keep a story straight.
First they say 'Between October and December' and then just a few lines later contradict themselves by saying they stopped in January.
Then they further contradict their words by releasing a security advisory stating they stopped in February.
We know this software has been on Lenovo laptops since June, at the least. So the Oct-Dec statement is a lie. Three straight lies in a row.
Simply put, you cannot trust this company any longer. Their 'fix' is a lie, their statements are lies, and they're trying to save face to avoid the Federal hand of pain bearing down upon them.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
Samsung also got caught this month injecting ads into TV viewing. They only got caught because they screwed up the algorithm and injected ads into people's personal ad-free videos. And then samsung's genius engineers biffed again by sending the TV microphone pickups back to samsung (which is okay--that's what siri, alexa, cortana, and google do) but doing so unencrypted.
Obviously parasitic ad injection is the the single most lucrative way to earn money on the internet. Your doing it just like google does for nearly all its revenue, selling ads and harvesting click-thru data, but your doing it without the associated cost of attracting customers with a product. No wonder Lenovo wanted this action.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
From a partner email regarding the SuperFish software:
"Please note that Lenovo has NOT loaded this software on any ThinkPad notebooks, nor any desktops, tablets, workstations, servers or smartphones. The only impacted models are the following consumer notebook series: Z-series, Y-Series, U-Series, G-Series, S-Series, Flex-Series, Yoga, Miix and E-Series."
They don't believe that. They believe their customers are stupid enough to believe it.
Our reputation is everything and our products are ultimately how we have our reputation.
Well, they'll miss it then! Their reputation is now that they are a sleazebag company willing to compromise their customers security so they can make a few bucks injecting unwanted advertising, then lying about the security risk when they got caught.
That's a company I will never do business with again.
In other news, Superfish has now been added to the Windows Defender malware database.