infoTECH Feature

February 24, 2015

Microsoft Moves Quickly to Remove Potentially Dangerous Adware From Lenovo Computers

Malware and hackers have become such a problem for the computer business and computer owners that it almost seems like a new story pops up every day. While hackers and malware used to confine themselves to attempting to get into home computers or business hubs, networks have been the name of the game most recently. That doesn’t mean these baddies are leaving home computers alone entirely. Most recently reports began surfacing that Lenovo (News - Alert) had left its computers vulnerable thanks to preinstalling an adware program called Superfish Visual Discovery.

While the number of PCs that have been affected by this malware is unknown, Microsoft (News - Alert) had worked fast in order to get rid of this particular adware. The action by Microsoft comes despite Lenovo itself had said that Superfish was not a dangerous piece of software. Those explanations came while it’s own advisory was marking the software as “highly severe” when it came to how dangerous the adware actually was. Late last week, Microsoft released the latest definitions for its Windows Defender software. These new definitions were geared especially to take out Superfish and it appears that the software had done its job quite effectively in a short period of time.

ZDNet reports one of its reporters that actually had a Lenovo PC, actually ran the process that Windows Defender says is needed in order to get rid of offending software. Once the process was run, ZDNet was able to confirm that the adware had been removed and that all was right with the world again.

The reaction by Microsoft was especially welcome considering that the company has taken fire over the last few months for its slow reaction to problems like this. While it has been pointed out that this case is different because the offending software wasn’t created by Windows and didn’t need to be tested, there’s still something to be said for how quickly the company moved. 




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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