[Year 12 IT Apps] Data security - Spyware installed as standard on mass-marketed computers

[Mark]

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/lenovo-superfish/

"If you’ve bought a Lenovo laptop anytime since August, it may have shipped
with a dangerous bit of adware known as Visual Discovery by Superfish. It’s
the kind of software add-on that computer makers are often paid to include
with their hardware. Superfish exists to serve up ads, but it does so in
such a maddeningly dangerous way that it creates a real security problem
for Lenovo users.

Worse, Lenovo appears completely clueless about the problem. The company
issued a statement shortly after security experts raised the issue, saying
it stopped shipping the adware last month and customers need not worry
about the thing compromising their security. “We have thoroughly
investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate
security concerns,” Lenovo said.

Robert Graham, the CEO of internet security firm called Errata Security,
doesn’t mince words in assessing the situation. “This is a bald-face lie,”
he says of Lenovo’s statement. “It’s obvious that there is a security
problem here.”

-- 

Pedantic?* Whom, I??*

Mark Kelly
mark AT vceit DOT com
http://vceit.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/itapps/attachments/20150220/ca974fd4/attachment.html