If You Bought A Lenovo, Be Worried

By | February 19, 2015


Firefox Users Remain Semi Safe In The Lenovo ScandalGreed 101.

If you have bought a Lenovo laptop this or last year and haven’t heard yet, one of the most successful PC makers has been caught installing adware on a number of machines with reports starting from mid-2014.

Basically, a software called Superfish is injecting third party ads on Google searches. Not only that, it also injects its own certificate, allowing to snoop on secure connections and decrypt them. Just take a look at this screenshot:

Firefox Users Remain Semi Safe In The Lenovo Scandal

According to reports, it does affect Internet Explorer and Google Chrome (likely Opera too) with the only exception being Firefox, which has its own certificate store. Update: It looks like Firefox is also affected.

If you own a Lenovo laptop, feel free to use this video guide, which tells you how to remove the adware.

One thing for sure, we won’t be touching any Lenovo’s anytime soon (if ever).

Update 2: And it has been cracked, the scandal just went from bad to worse.

[Via: Lenovo Forums, ZDNet, TNW]


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Comments (3)

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  1. jaffathecake says:
    February 19, 2015 at 9:12 am

    Unfortunately Firefox users are just as vulnerable, as the malware installs Firefox plugins. Here’s the Mozilla bug ticket where they’re looking into fixes https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1134506#c19

    • rockdoe says:
      February 19, 2015 at 10:38 am

      The post which made that claim has since been deleted – it may have been in error. In any case Mozilla is investigating to make sure Firefox is indeed unaffected, or issue send a blocklist update to stop the plugin.

  2. Stve says:
    February 21, 2015 at 4:43 am

    Windows Defender has been updated to remove it , canna remember Microsoft doing anything this quick before.

    https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zdnet.com%2Farticle%2Fmicrosoft-updates-windows-defender-to-remove-superfish-infection%2F&ei=1lLoVMfzIorwUvCugqgP&usg=AFQjCNHEyZC6KDclD9FkEQ0V4iklm7CqXQ&sig2=FUwNE50_1zudwAG-ovSJOw&bvm=bv.86475890,d.d24

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