Lenovo laptops loaded with Superfish malware

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#1242974 20-Feb-2015 12:01

I checked my wife's work Lenovo and it's all clear.

alexx

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#1243199 20-Feb-2015 17:15

Does anyone have a date where this started?
I see someone mention discovery of Superfish in a mid-2014 Lenovo mentioned in one article.

Can we say that a certain date range is definitely clean?
I think all the Lenovo's belonging to family and friends are from prior to 2014.

Some details on removing the malware here from arstechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-to-remove-the-superfish-malware-what-lenovo-doesnt-tell-you/

The removal instructions on the Lenovo site can't be trusted as they leave important things out, like what to do about Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, as Mozilla has it's own certificate stores.

If it was me that was affected, I'd be demanding new Windows installation media, because you certainly wouldn't want to keep that Windows recovery image that came on the drive.

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#1243538 21-Feb-2015 10:51

Lenovo CTO admits they stuffed up.

nathan

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#1243560 21-Feb-2015 11:19

Windows Defender is now detecting and removing this malware

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#1243579 21-Feb-2015 11:30

MF thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.

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#1243650 21-Feb-2015 13:09

nathan: Windows Defender is now detecting and removing this malware

But perhaps not a complete solution when applications use their own certificate store. e.g Mozilla Firefox.

One caveat: Windows Defender doesn't monitor Mozilla Firefox, which maintains its own certificate store. After successfully running the cleanup, I checked the certificate store in Firefox and discovered that the potentially dangerous root certificate was still installed in that browser and would require manual removal. Mozilla's Cryptographic Engineering Manager, Richard Barnes, says via email that the company is "investigating this situation" and will provide further updates when their investigation is complete.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-updates-windows-defender-to-remove-superfish-infection/

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#1243655 21-Feb-2015 13:17

alexx:
nathan: Windows Defender is now detecting and removing this malware

But perhaps not a complete solution when applications use their own certificate store. e.g Mozilla Firefox.

One caveat: Windows Defender doesn't monitor Mozilla Firefox, which maintains its own certificate store. After successfully running the cleanup, I checked the certificate store in Firefox and discovered that the potentially dangerous root certificate was still installed in that browser and would require manual removal. Mozilla's Cryptographic Engineering Manager, Richard Barnes, says via email that the company is "investigating this situation" and will provide further updates when their investigation is complete.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-updates-windows-defender-to-remove-superfish-infection/

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nathan

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#1243846 21-Feb-2015 18:57

KiwiNZ: I checked my wife's work Lenovo and it's all clear.

It seems it was only loaded onto consumer Lenovo devices not corporate products (which I guess would be wiped and reimaged anyway)

nathan

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#1243847 21-Feb-2015 18:58

And the Lenovo removal tool is released

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish_uninstall

Ford

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#1247050 26-Feb-2015 13:21

My model doesn't have it installed, thankfully

Apparently you can by PC's that are Microsoft signature edition, where by the system has windows OS only installed with no preinstalled crapware or antivirus products.

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#1247070 26-Feb-2015 13:27

nathan: And the Lenovo removal tool is released

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish_uninstall

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#1247087 26-Feb-2015 13:52

Link works for me. Try again?

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#1247105 26-Feb-2015 14:13

nathan: And the Lenovo removal tool is released

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish_uninstall

Confirm link working now at 2:13pm (at my fourth attempt)

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#1247123 26-Feb-2015 14:29

Remember Lenovo was under a DNS attack just before.

Dratsab

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#1247198 26-Feb-2015 16:32

Very interesting. I don't have a Lenovo (and certainly no modern laptops/pc's!!) but I decided to go hunting anyway. None of the rogue certificates were installed and there were no subject references in Thunderbird. However, I found two references to Superfish in my registry (for 32 bit and 64 bit respectively), with the two keys having the same field sets:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extension Compatibility\{74F475FA-6C75-43BD-AAB9-ECDA6184F600}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extension Compatibility\{74F475FA-6C75-43BD-AAB9-ECDA6184F600}

• Default REG_SZ (value not set)
• BlockType REG_SZ 0x02;0x02
• CompatibilityFlags REG_SZ 0x0;0x0
• DllName REG_SZ SuperfishIEAddon.dll;SuperfishIEAddon.dll
• FWLink REG_SZ http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=211979
• Version REG_SZ 1.1.1.0;1.2.0.0

The .dll's referenced didn't exist, but I do find the presence of the registry keys a little intriguing.

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