Lenovo Ships Possibly Dangerous Adware On New Computers….. Yikes!
There’s a lot of people who don’t like Lenovo. Some people don’t like them because they’re Chinese, which means that they must be evil in some way. Some weren’t thrilled with their business practices. Neither is good. But this is going to make things worse for them. The Next Web is reporting that Lenovo has been caught installing adware on their computers:
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.
Superfish appears to affect Internet Explorer and Google Chrome on these Lenovo computers.
For a top tier computer company to do this is beyond unacceptable. What really bothers me is that when they were caught, they did promise to stop shipping it, but they also defended it by saying that this adware “helps users find and discover products visually” and “instantly analyzes images on the web and presents identical and similar product offers that may have lower prices.”
That is quite frankly is a load of bull. But it doesn’t end there:
Other users are reporting that the adware actually installs its own self-signed certificate authority which effectively allows the software to snoop on secure connections, like banking websites as pictured in action below.
This is a malicious technique commonly known as a man-in-the middle attack, where the certificate allows the software to decrypt secure requests, yet Lenovo appears to be shipping this software with some of its products out of the box.
If this is true — we’ve only seen screenshots so far — Superfish could be far more dangerous than just inserting advertising.
I am shocked by Lenovo’s behavior and I for one will not recommend their products going forward to my customers as they clearly cannot be trusted.
Now if you’ve got a Lenovo computer and you wish to check to see if you’ve got this adware on your computer, click here for a site that will allow you to do that. If you are infected, there are instructions to remove it on the site.
September 6, 2017 at 9:46 am
[…] might recall that laptop maker Lenovo was caught installing adware that put its customers at risk a couple of years ago. After it kind of, sort of promised to get rid of the adware, and having had third parties prove […]