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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."
Translation: our laptops are for consumers to buy crap online, and not for any kind of serious work.
Good to know!
Finding God in a Dog
Someone needs to be fired for this. Someone very high up the corporate ladder. Someone who thinks SuperFish improves the shopping ecperience. Someone who needs to be blackballed from the industry and die penniless huddled in a cardboard box drinking sterno.
If that doesn't happen, SuperFish and problems like it will continue to happen.
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.
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.
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.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
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.
In other news, Superfish has now been added to the Windows Defender malware database.