We learned yesterday that Lenovo has been pre-installing a program called SuperFish on all new economy computers. The software that came with SuperFish allows ads to be overlain on Google to target certain consumers. The big issue with this is the software was installing adware over your Google searches and webpages without the permission of the users! This caused for alarm throughout the tech community. We have learned that it was mostly done on the economy based Lenovo versions, and only seems to be affected on Internet Explorer and Chrome as Mozilla has there own certificate database.
Your computer could have a mind of its own!
Another aspect to this issue is that several users have reported that this added software installed on the computers can actually self install their own certificate which then allows them to snoop and gain information from what the browsers and computer are doing. This could be bank account information and so forth. Lenovo claims this has not happened but multiple users say they have found proof that it has been taking place. This is often found in a technique called Man-In-The-Middle where it allows the certificates installed on the website to decrypt and steal the passwords on the site in question. Again there are only pictures, and Lenovo says otherwise. But if true it could be a whole new level for SuperFish. W.A.C.D. has created a video on how to generally uninstall unwanted software, and it can be used in this case.
There is good news!
The good news is though that most Antiviruses, including the paid version of AVG, mark SuperFish as a malicious software and try to block it. Once again this shows why you need to have a paid version of an antivirus as the free ones just don’t protect you like you think!
The Community Admin Mark Hopkins, has said that they have “Temporarily” stopped installing SuperFish on the Lenovo until SuperFish can come up with a proven way that it will not do the Adware game.
It could get worst!
If this is as big as it appears to be from news articles, Lenovo users are in for a rough time, until this gets straightened out! If you have any questions or concerns or need us to take a look at the laptop or desktop give us a call or email our techs and we can setup an appointment to get this looked at!