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Lenovo Hit With Lawsuit Over Superfish Adware
An anonymous reader writes with news that the fallout from the Superfish fiasco might just be starting for Lenovo. "Lenovo admitted to pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs, and unhappy customers are now dragging the company to court on the matter. A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges both companies with 'fraudulent' business practices and of making Lenovo PCs vulnerable to malware and malicious attacks by pre-loading the adware. Plaintiff Jessica Bennett said her laptop was damaged as a result of Superfish, which was called 'spyware' in court documents. She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits."
I hope it costs both of them twice what they earned
how about the security flaws in the spyware? if it's a "BFD" go ahead and install it on you own system.
I think we all want Lenovo's feet held to the fire for this one, but what is the right course of action? A class action lawsuit, that benefits few people in the class, but enriches lawyers... Or a criminal prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for aiding malicious actors in installing their malware/spyware?
Yeah it's a BFD, Lenovo took money to install an application that deliberately reduced end user security for the sake of inserting ads into their browsing activities! Not only is it completely bereft of ethics and respect for their customers, it's actively dangerous.
They shouldn't just be hit via a class action suit (assuming Lenovo isn't sticking a "binding arbitration" clause to defeat the ability for consumers to seek recourse) but Federal prosecution under one of the many computer security laws that would string up anyone else.
The issue isn't whether EULAs are *potentially* enforceable. The question is whether *this* EULA is enforceable.
In general there is no contract unless their is some kind of exchange of "considerations". Typically the consideration is the privilege of using the copyright holder's software. But, if you can show that users don't want to use this software, and that it is installed for the benefit of a third party, there is no exchange of considerations between the end-user and the copyright holder, and therefore no valid contract.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This fine bloatware didn't merely act as an MiTM, it do so so incompetently that it exposed the user to basically any MiTM attack on an SSL connection(the root cert it used to sign bogus certificates was identical across every installation and effectively unprotected and the MiTM component would re-sign any cert handed to it, even an invalid one, opening the user to downright trivial MiTM attacks.
Even if the actual behavior of the bloatware were downright saintly(which is not the case) it was so incompetently constructed as to be indistinguishable from malice.
Which is why it should be a criminal or regulatory investigation instead. However, because of the way our legal system is put together, this kind of DIY justice is pretty much the only option. People resort to class action lawsuits because prosecutors and law enforcement have written themselves out of responsibility and delegated enforcement of such laws to the consumer. Many laws and regulations are ONLY triggerable via class action lawsuit.
I'm not usually one to celebrate lawsuits. And you're right, there's not a lot of individual damage per computer. Rather, I'm perfectly fine with a modest payout per users that punishes Lenovo for this, both monetarily and with bad press. This sort of behavior absolutely has to stop, and I'm willing to enrich a few lawyers to make it happen. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good, I suppose.
Maybe this will wake people up to the fact that we seriously need some stronger consumer privacy laws. I'm also typically one who prefers to let markets manage themselves until it's clear that government actually needs to step in. I'm afraid we're at that point, because it's abundantly clear that too many companies are willing to go to just about any lengths to extract personal data from people in unscrupulous ways (as well as the government itself, ironically, but we'll tackle that issue separately).
So, yeah, it is actually a BFD. In fact, not every business customer uses their own system image - especially smaller business. And just because a personal user chooses specific services like Google whom they may trust, it does not give another company the right to make those decisions on their behalf. Many of those customers may well have chosen to avoid such services for that very reason. That choice was taken away from them, and instead, the computer they paid for was made less secure by that adware which was forced on them unknowingly. Fine, it's a first world problem, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I have a feeling this is less about recovering from damages and more about teaching them a formal lesson (well, cashing-in under the guise of teaching them a formal lesson).
That's the entire point of a class action suit. To stop powerful companies from doing a large number of small harms and getting away with it.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I fail to see what kind of financial loss Lenovo customers might have incurred over this incident to warrant a class action suit.
Even if the class action suit only wins one penny, it will be worth it. Having a verdict on this issue can set a legal precedent (especially since Lenovo is probably not interested in defending the case too hard either).
For instance, it could pave the way for more easily winning a class action against Verizon. Verizon's case is a bit different, especially now that they're supposedly giving their customers the option to opt-out, but with a little bit of luck, a quick verdict on the Lenovo case could make Verizon reconsider its ongoing super-cookie/man-in-the-middle attack strategy against its own customers.
It's a common refrain to say that nobody benefits from class action suits except the lawyers. While that may be true for the class litigants themselves it is entirely untrue for the public at large. The purpose of large punitive rewards is to penalize corporate misbehavior and in turn incentivize good behavior. By that measure we all benefit from these suits.
I think it should be clear to everyone now. Lenovo is not IBM and it may have managed to retain some of the reputation of the IBM branding that went with its computers. But with one mistake it has managed to wipe that all away with SuperFish. I learned my lesson a couple years ago that Lenovo was not IBM and it would never be anything close. I would not buy another Lenovo PC if they sold them for a dollar. I hope Lenovo pays dearly for this mistake, and I hope other PC makers see this as a lesson to not sell out its customers to some two bit crapware company to earn a few bucks.
This is exactly the sort of crap everyone was predicting when IBM sold their PC line to Lenovo.
The only thing that surprises me is that it took so long.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
That’s simple assuming anyone in the US actually gives enough of a damn. If fines are levied on Lenovo as a result of this lawsuit, US Customs would be within their power to seize any Lenovo merchandise shipped to the US at the border until all fines are paid in full.
That’s a pretty good whack in the bottom line for any company, regardless of the nation in which they’re located. As long as they expect to sell their widgets to people physically located in the United States, US law can trivially be applied to them in such a way that they would need to comply before they may continue to operate profitably.
Whether this suit will be successful of course is a completely different story, but there’s no problem enforcing any judgement which may emerge from it.
Many "enterprise" (lol) class proxies (deployed by corporations to "protect" their internal networks") do the exact same thing.
Totally different:
1. In a proxy, the key used to sign MITM traffic is on a device not accessible to anyone but the admins, not stored on a PC (probably improperly secured) that other malware could access.
2. A good proxy will check certs on the server side of the connection. The one we use will either "pass through" certificate errors, or allow us to block sites with invalid certs entirely.
3. A proper setup will use the URL categorization to not MITM certain traffic. We decrypt anything that's blocked (you have to in order to deliver a block page without cert errors), but that's not a big deal since it never even talks to the server. We also don't decrypt healthcare, banking, shopping, etc.