Lenovo laptops loaded with Superfish malware

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freitasm

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Topic # 165761 19-Feb-2015 20:02

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It seems Lenovo laptops are being loaded with Superfish malware out of the factory.

The malware installs a SSL certificate and acts as a proxy, in effect doing a MITM attack to decrypt any encrypted pages (such as search engines) and analyze pages to add their own advertising and popups.

If you like your privacy and security...

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Reply # 1242548 19-Feb-2015 20:07

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One of my suppliers has been encouraging me to start quoting Lenovo desktops for clients, and I was wavering a bit. I'm not considering it any more (even though this issue is supposedly only on consumer machines). This tells me a lot about the ATTITUDE of a company.

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freitasm

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Reply # 1242572 19-Feb-2015 20:52

Certainly not looking good.

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mattwnz

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Reply # 1242583 19-Feb-2015 20:57

Wow if true.

Dairyxox

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Reply # 1242605 19-Feb-2015 21:19

Shocking but not entirely dissimilar to malware on all major brands hard drives exposed recently...

Kaspersky's reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital Corp, Seagate Technology Plc, Toshiba Corp, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program

How many of these were brought for corporate use.
This certainly lessens my opinion of Lenovo that's for sure.

gzt

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Reply # 1242610 19-Feb-2015 21:23

freitasm: It seems Lenovo laptops are being loaded with Superfish malware out of the factory.

The malware installs a SSL certificate and acts as a proxy, in effect doing a MITM attack to decrypt any encrypted pages (such as search engines) and analyze pages to add their own advertising and popups.

If you like your privacy and security...

Not good. They will regret that for a long time.

gzt

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Reply # 1242655 19-Feb-2015 22:01

Dairyxox: Shocking but not entirely dissimilar to malware on all major brands hard drives exposed recently...

Kaspersky's reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital Corp, Seagate Technology Plc, Toshiba Corp, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program

How many of these were brought for corporate use.
This certainly lessens my opinion of Lenovo that's for sure.

Yes, this is entirely dissimilar.

Dairyxox

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Reply # 1242667 19-Feb-2015 22:14

There are several similarities.

raytaylor

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Reply # 1242696 19-Feb-2015 23:46

Is this just a mistake, a rogue staffer, or a marketing department decision f* up?

I hope its not the latter.

And we see one of these stories each year - with malware on usb sticks given out as corporate promos, or pre-installed ona tablet etc

usually a rogue staffer is assigned as the scapegoat and the company puts out a statement that it was the factory that screwed up, they take privacy seriously, someone has been fired, bla bla bla

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Reply # 1242700 19-Feb-2015 23:55

and when exactly did it start?

Swype on iOS is detrimental to accurate typing. Apologies in advance.

gzt

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Reply # 1242702 19-Feb-2015 23:58

Dairyxox: There are several similarities.

Probably not so much it should be confused in the same thread, but here we go ; )

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equation_group/
http://mobile.eweek.com/security/equation-group-spyware-poses-threats-far-beyond-its-original-purpose.html

Kaspersky discovered that one. There is no indication their product will detect it, anyone know differnet?

surfisup1000

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Reply # 1242704 20-Feb-2015 00:01

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This is a chinese government scheme to mine and steal data.

Huawei are doing the same with every chip designed to sniff data packets.

The conspiracy theorist in me :)

I am planning on buying the new x1 with the sm951 ssd , at such time they come on sale.

gzt

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Reply # 1242708 20-Feb-2015 00:08

raytaylor: Is this just a mistake, a rogue staffer, or a marketing department decision f* up?

I hope its not the latter.

And we see one of these stories each year - with malware on usb sticks given out as corporate promos, or pre-installed ona tablet etc

usually a rogue staffer is assigned as the scapegoat and the company puts out a statement that it was the factory that screwed up, they take privacy seriously, someone has been fired, bla bla bla

I think its pretty simple. Manufacturers just assume the parties offering them money to preload (ie; bloat) the system are not (a) evil or (b) stupid and get a contract signed to that effect. But no actual security auditing. That would be expensive.

But probably this requirement is about to be added. ; )

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Reply # 1242725 20-Feb-2015 00:57

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i stopped buying PCs the day a brand new HP netbook came with both Norton and McAffee installed. Not sure how they managed that in their deployment image.

These days for any brand new PC I help set up for friends/family, first thing I do is a clean install