News

Lenovo has been caught installing adware on its computers

If you’re running on a Lenovo PC, chances are your machine as some serious adware.

by
Kevin Raposo
February 19, 2015

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It shouldn not come as a surprise that PCs are highly vulnerable to viruses, malware and adware. You should know this by now. They can come from anywhere: a website, hacker, or even a shady download. Those are expected, but when the fault falls on one of the worlds biggest PC manufacturer, it’s a whole different ballgame. Reports from all over are claiming that Lenovo has been caught installing adware onto new computers.

The adware in question is named SuperFish, and the way it works is that it unknowingly forces ads into users’ browsers without them knowing. This isn’t your innocent run of the mill adware, however, this goes a whole step further. According to SlashGear, “Superfish installs its own security certificate authority which allows it to actually eavesdrop even on secure connections, like, those that you use for banking or very private activities.”

This is a common tactic used by hackers, also known as Man in the Middle or MITM.

Back in January, one of Lenovo’s community administrators, Mark Hopkins, wrote in a forum post to address some livid customers: “we have temporarily removed Superfish from our consumer systems until such time as Superfish is able to provide a software build that addresses these issues.”

Naturally, Hopkins goes further by defending the adware saying that it “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.”

Yea, bullshit.

Superfish seems to be only affecting users on Internet Explorer and Google Chrome running on Lenovo computers. If you’re one of the people affected by Superfish, one user created this video on how to delete the adware manually.