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."

Comments

The lesson here

[MAXOMENOS]

The feedback from users was that it wasn’t useful, and that’s why we turned it off.

Translation: our laptops are for consumers to buy crap online, and not for any kind of serious work.

Good to know!

Re:The lesson here

[penix1]

Obviously they care about people like me, because they're taking steps to fix the situation rather than ignoring it.

Well, since the crapware came pre-installed, to really show they care they AREN'T providing you with a new system image with it removed. Instead, you are left to remove it yet again if you ever have to reset to factory....Yay Lenovo!

Re:The lesson here

[MightyMartian]

They're taking steps to fix the situation, after having been busted putting spyware on them. That doesn't exactly make them sound honorable.

Re:The lesson here

[geekmux]

I have a lenovo laptop, it does serious work just fine. Obviously they care about people like me, because they're taking steps to fix the situation rather than ignoring it.

"Our reputation is everything"

They care about saving face because they were caught which can directly impact sales. It doesn't mean they're going to uninstall the other crapware you're not bitching about right now. When that goes viral, they might remove it then, but make no mistake as to their overall intent of ensuring as many revenue streams as possible.

Re:The lesson here

[The-Ixian]

It was the cheaper consumer models that were affected. Retail profit margins are so thin that manufacturers and retailers make up for it with preloaded crapware.

This may have been true at one time, but I don't think it is the case any longer. I think that the ubiquity of cheap components and the falling price of Windows for OEMs, the profit margins have been steadily increasing over the years.
 
I think it is just that OEMs have become dependent on the revenue stream they get from app developers who want their software included in the base image.

Re:The lesson here

[Pieroxy]

Why prevent your spouse to have fun? Share the love !

Re:The lesson here

[Jawnn]

There is a lot of truth to that statement. It was the cheaper consumer models that were affected. Retail profit margins are so thin that manufacturers and retailers make up for it with preloaded crapware.

Lenovo's business products were not affected by this as these aren't usually preloaded with crap.

So you say, and I am inclined to believe it is so. Nevertheless, Lenovo has demonstrated, in clear and undeniable terms, that profit outweighs the needs of their customers, including the need to have a secure and trustworthy computing platform. The have violated that trust.
"And for that reason, I'm out."

Re:The lesson here

[Jawnn]

They're taking steps to fix the situation, after having been busted putting spyware on them. That doesn't exactly make them sound honorable.

Worse than just spyware, far worse. They installed a trivially easy-to-exploit vulnerability which affects the security of every web app their customers might ever use.

Re:The lesson here

[quetwo]

Except on most of those Signature Edition PCs, they still include a trial of Office 365 :) The HP's on the site have pre-loaded software that help you buy ink. So, it's halfway true...

It's just other people's trialware or junkware they don't include.

Re:The lesson here

[cdrudge]

I think it is just that OEMs have become dependent on the revenue stream...

They aren't dependent on it, they just don't want to leave a revenue stream untapped.

Re:The lesson here

[TsuruchiBrian]

Every company's primary goal is maximizing profit. The only difference is between strategy. Some companies try to maximize profits by cutting their own costs by being efficient and making a superior product that customers actually want. Some companies try to maximize profits by bribing politicians to pass laws hindering their competitors. Some companies try to maximize profits by tricking people (e.g. tricking them into buying products that are not as good as advertized).

If the trust that you had violated was your trust that a corporation valued profit over you, then it's time to stop being a consumer and to start farming in your back yard.

Asking a corporation to value it's customers more than profit is like asking you to value a corporation more than your children. Neither party should be under the false pretense of the other having unconditional loyalty. This is a mutually beneficial business arrangement that is ended the second either side realizes it is no longer beneficial to them.

What I am getting at is that the problem is not that they placed profit above you. Every corporation (even the good ones) do that. The problem is that they tricked you. "Good" companies don't trick people, not because the don't value profit above all else, but because unlike Lenovo, they actually do care about their reputation (as a means to profit).

Re:The lesson here

[Hadlock]

Most computers these days don't come with a restore disc, let alone a disc drive.
 
Nowadays they have a compressed restore image on the drive that occupies between four and twenty GB as a restore option, which likely comes with the crapware ready to spring in to action(!).

Seems like they should send out DVDs

[drinkypoo]

It seems like they ought to be offering to send out fresh system restore images to customers, either via download or by DVD-for-a-small-shipping-fee. A tool which promises to remove the offending infection seems inadequate.

Re:Sony Comcast Level Reputation

[Aristos Mazer]

Be fair. Sony and Comcast have both blamed their customers and dallied around in court for quite a while before doing anything, or avoided doing anything in some cases. Lenovo reacted within a day. Lenovo may have taken a fall, but there are circles to Hell, and they aren't in the same class as Sony and Comcast.

That's a stretch

[jones_supa]

The intent of loading this tool was to help enhance our users’ shopping experience.

Shut up. It injects advertising into search engine results, and also has the capability to intercept and hijack SSL/TLS connections to websites, thanks to the installation of a self-signing certificate authority on affected machines. You are not enhancing my shopping experience in any way, but you are doing a great job ruining my computer experience. This is nothing more than classic OEM crapware at its best.

Re:That's a stretch

[DarkOx]

The first followup question should be; did / do you have Superfish installed on YOUR computer? I would be really interested to hear how much he valued this 'enhanced shopping experience'.

The simple fact is they willfully shipped spyware. Beyond that they willfully shipped spyware with the potential to compromise one of the most fundamental security mechanisms Internet users rely on, SSL/TSL by inserting itself into the authentication chain. Beyond that the Superfish spyware did compromise SSL/TLS because the private key it uses to generate proxy certificates was poorly protected.

So on the first count we might excuse them, everybody does it although its still slimy. On the second count they should have know they were crossing a line and entering deep scumbag territory. On the third count well, again I guess everybody does it.

Root Cause

[zieroh]

The intent of loading this tool was to help enhance our users’ shopping experience.

The belief that the "shopping experience" of their users needed "enhancing" speaks loudly as to exactly how little Lenovo understands.

Re:Root Cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Same reason you have ads on cable TV, the executives of the company are psychopathic greedy fucks with no morals who can't ever get enough profits from you.

Trust has been broken

[OzPeter]

we will provide a tool that removes all traces of the app from people’s laptops;

So how I do trust that:

1. This tool will do as it says
2. You won't repeat the process in the future?

The trust with Lenovo has been broken and I can't see what they can ever do in order to restore it.

Re:Banned from our approved vendors list

[rjhubs]

Any competent company should have their own OS image put onto new laptops. This should not affect the corporate world.

They got caught this time...

[JimMcc]

But what about next time?

What about other vendors?

The quest to further "monetize" customers that have already paid for a product is one that more and more companies are doing. I understand the business reasons behind it, but what about the consumer's rights? Do we have any let? Superfish is an especially egregious example if this problem. It is, in essence, a back door installed into millions of consumer devices. The penalties on a company should be so severe that they couldn't just make it disappear in one quarter, but not so severe that it forces the company in bankruptcy. In other words it needs to be painful enough that other companies will think long and hard about possibly doing something similar, but stopping short of putting the head of the villain on a stick outside the castle walls.

Sadly, I think the extent of the punishment will be a little bad press for a few days, then they'll continue on as if nothing had happened.

Re:Only a partial removal?

[DarkOx]

Well Mozilla products are defective in this area IMHO. They should system certificate stores by default rather than their own. On Windows they should the windows store, on OSX they should keychain and on linux/bsd they should use /etc/ssl

Shipping their own is confusing for end users and forces them to manage multiple trust locations. I can totally see some people wanting to use a different keystore for their web browser than other software uses and having an option would be nice, but it should NOT be the default let alone the only offered behavior. I write this as a long time Seamonkey user, but this would be my biggest complaint.

Re:Only a partial removal?

[Khyber]

"Well Mozilla products are defective in this area IMHO. They should system certificate stores by default rather than their own."

Nope. Having your own cert store protects you if the primary OS cert store gets fucked.

My god it is like the lessons of granular security have just been totally forgotten, these days.

Re:Banned from our approved vendors list

[JohnFen]

It doesn't matter. That they were willing to do this on low-cost consumer machines indicates a lack of judgement that reflects on all aspects of their company.

Re:Banned from our approved vendors list

[MickyTheIdiot]

Just fine in bigass-corporate-company land, but the world is bigger than that. A huge amount of US economic activity is in small business, and how many of those have competent IT? This will be a possible opening of a lot of companies for a long time.

Re:Banned from our approved vendors list

[mrchaotica]

It also wouldn't affect the corporate world because business-grade PCs were never infected with it in the first place.

However, the real issue -- the one that makes competent companies completely justified in shit-listing Lenovo -- is the argument that if a company is capable of exercising such poor judgement now, then who knows what other poor judgement they might show in the future. Maybe the next "oops" will be a hardware keylogger in Thinkpads or a compromised WiFi firmware or something.

Lenovo may have backpedaled this time, but the malware only happened to begin with because somebody at Lenovo thought it was a good idea. That, by itself, poses an unacceptable risk to any sane customer.

Re:Only a partial removal?

[Khyber]

The discussion is far from moot. Security also involves mitigation. By assuming your OS is fucked in the first place, you get programs that should in theory provide more security by using their own stuff instead of the OS, thus mitigating (or outright eliminating in some cases) the specific threat to the point of rendering it useless. Thus, even if the OS isn't actually compromised, you've still greatly managed to increase your security over the baseline.