An now for the euphemism of the day: Lenovo: "Our goal was to enhance the experience for users; we recognize that the software did not meet that goal and have acted quickly and decisively." Lenovo had added a program called Superfish to each of its computers that it sold. The software " was designed to show targeted ads by analyzing images of products that a user might see on the web and then presenting "identical and similar product offers that may have lower prices." It also produced multiple pop-up ads (they insist it wasn't malware). "And this week, several independent experts reported that Superfish works by substituting its own security key for the encryption certificates that many websites use to protect users' information. "This means that anyone affected by this adware cannot trust any secure connections they make," researcher Marc Rogers wrote on his blog.
What's worse, experts said, is that Superfish appears to re-use the same encryption certificate for every computer, which means a hacker who cracked the Superfish key could have broad access to a variety of online transactions."
What a wonderful enhancement. Lesson of the day. If you buy a new computer, before you do anything else, run decrapifier (http://download.cnet.com/PC-Decrapifier/3000-2096_4-10636481.html) and eliminate every piece of pre-installed software. Better yet, buy a PC without an OS and install Linux.
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