Tag Archive for: lenovo

Lenovo promises to cut the crapware in the wake of Superfish debacle

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Lenovo announced today that it will stop shipping PCs with adware and bloatware and that it now aims to be the “leader in providing cleaner, safer PCs.”

This response comes in the wake of a massive backlash after the company was found to be including bundled advertising software that completely broke the security provided by HTTPS.

Lenovo’s plan comes in two parts. First, the company will scale back preinstalled software. Its systems will include the operating system and any necessary drivers and software to make the hardware work (to, for example, support fingerprint readers or 3D cameras). It will also include some Lenovo applications (such as the ThinkVantage System Update software, which is a genuinely useful app for updating drivers and system firmware) and security software.

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab

Like Google in Vietnam, Lenovo tripped up by a DNS attack

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The redirection of both Lenovo’s website and Google’s main search page for Vietnam this week highlights weaknesses with the Internet’s addressing system.

On Wednesday, visitors to lenovo.com were greeted with what appeared to be webcam images of a bored young man sitting in a bedroom, and the song “Breaking Free” from an old Disney movie. On Monday, Google’s site for Vietnam also briefly redirected people to another website.

Both Google and Lenovo were victims of “domain hijacking,” a type of attack against the Domain Name System (DNS), which translates domain names into IP addresses that can be called into a browser.

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Network World Security

Lenovo admits to Superfish screw-up, will release clean-up tool

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Lenovo has admitted it “messed up badly” by pre-loading software on some consumer laptops that exposed users to possible attack, and said it will soon release a tool to remove it.

“I have a bunch of very embarrassed engineers on my staff right now,” Lenovo CTO Peter Hortensius said in an interview Thursday. “They missed this.”

Users have been complaining since September about the third-party program, called Superfish, which injects product recommendations into search results. But it only emerged Wednesday that the program also opens a serious security hole.

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Network World Security

Not shocked by Lenovo power cable recall

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So I’m sitting at my kitchen table this morning scanning news items on my Lenovo ThinkPad, which is plugged into my kitchen wall via a Lenovo power cable, when I read this headline: “Lenovo recalls power cables over fire risk.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission website was a bit more graphic: “Lenovo Recalls Computer Power Cords Due to Fire and Burn Hazards.”

Oh, swell.

All that was left to do was to see if my machine and its cable were on the recall list … I mean all that was left after gingerly unplugging. My luck on the recall front has been running cold of late, thanks to Toyota, so I was prepared for the bad news.

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Network World Paul McNamara