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"We Messed Up Badly" Lenovo Admits Putting Tracking Software On Your PC

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

File this under ‘you can’t make this stuff up.’

Lenovo Group, the largest computer manufacturer in the world, has made a rather stunning admission that they have been pre-installing tracking software on their PCs.

The tracking software is made by a company called Superfish, which apparently paid some “very minor compensation” to Lenovo for putting the software on people’s computers.

The Superfish program is a total disaster.

It has image recognition algorithms which essentially monitor what a user is looking at… then suggests relevant ads based on what it thinks you might like.

This is not only REALLY high up on the creepy scale, it also completely destroys Internet security.

Whether you’re buying something online or accessing Internet banking, the Superfish program essentially cuts the secure link between you and sensitive websites that you’re trying to access.

According to the first user who found the vulnerability a few weeks ago, “[Superfish] will hijack ALL your secure web connections (SSL/TLS) by using self-signed root certificate authority, making it look legitimate to the browser.”

This means that the tracking software basically fools a web browser into believing that a connection is secure when it’s not… all for the purpose of pushing more ads in your face.

This scheme is so powerful that even if users uninstall the Superfish software, the security breach still remains.

This is so flagrant I have to imagine that even the NSA is shocked.

After its initial approach of being completely unapologetic and dismissal, Lenovo is now groveling for forgiveness.

The company’s Chief Technology Officer now says, “We messed up badly here,” and “We made a mistake.”

Duh. But untold amounts of consumers out there have been totally violated.

There are a few interesting points to make here–

1) Privacy isn’t dead. But it’s extremely difficult to maintain. There are so many forces out there trying to pry whatever little privacy remains from us, one has to fight tooth and nail to preserve it.

 

2) There’s no transparency in the system; we never really know what’s going on behind the scenes with big institutions.

Governments and politicians will lie to our faces. They’ll tell us to be excited and that everything is fine; then behind the scenes they’ll plan for capital controls and huge tax increases.

No one has any idea what kind of toxic crap banks have on their balance sheets. They’ll post record profits and tell us how successful they are. But internally they know that it’s only a matter of time before they collapse (as we saw in 2008).

Even major tech brands are betraying the public in the dark of night with crazy spyware or selling us all out to government agencies.

There are very few, if any, big institutions out there that we can trust anymore.

And maybe that’s how it should be.

It’s a shark-filled world with bad people who do bad things. Perhaps it’s all the better that a trusted brand becomes the poster child for betrayal.

Because if Lenovo is doing this, are we supposed to be so naïve to presume that Google, Apple, AT&T, etc. are not?

Question everything.

 

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Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:34 | 5808916 Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance's picture

If push comes to shove I would rather the NSA spy on me. After all, if you can't trust the Feds who can you trust?

/sarc

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:40 | 5808948 sun tzu
sun tzu's picture

Except the feds can legally kidnap and/or kill you

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:45 | 5808970 Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance's picture

Yes....but I'm quite certain they will respect my rights while doing so.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:59 | 5809023 Skateboarder
Skateboarder's picture

Was listening to a local radio program early this AM. Host was talking about en-ess-eh? spying + hacked sim cards + Snowden, etc. At some point in arguing for privacy he says, "it not just a moral issue, it's a legal issue too." I turned off the radio.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:20 | 5809159 mvsjcl
mvsjcl's picture

"bad people who do bad things"

 

Bullshit. Bad governments that are run by bad people that are installed by bad people who do bad things. Yes, bad people do bad things. But such a blanket statement tends to diminish the desire to find out who the bad people really are. You're a tool, Simon.

 

WHO are the bad people?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:27 | 5809226 7.62x54r
7.62x54r's picture

Windows is a big fucking security hole.

The last laptop I bought, I nuked the HD, and loaded LINUX on.

Distros like Ubuntu are ready for primetime, work out of the install without doing nerdly incantations, and have complete passphrase encryption of the entire HD as an install option. My only windows box is reserved strictly for PC games, and is not used for the web, email, or serious work.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:03 | 5809484 A Nanny Moose
A Nanny Moose's picture

Doesn't matter. This shit is being written into CPU instruction sets and firmware.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:32 | 5809524 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

Great, great... Except the elevated privileged execution root-kit used by firmware virii (or maybe a manufacturer 'feature') probably uses a UNIX shell that runs before any operating system is installed. If that's triggered by the BIOS or PCI initialization firmware, it has happened well before Linux is even thinking about starting. A hacker (or government) can own your machine with 200 bytes of x86 assembler instructions and a tiny UNIX shell. Detection possibility: almost zero.

And if you're like 50% of all broadband internet users in the United States, you're going through Comcast. They do deep packet inspection on all your traffic all the time and spoof certificates to get around any attempt for you to use secure http or ssl. Just call them up and ask - I'm sure they'll be happy to admit their snooping and fully disclose all parties that are fed details about your on-line activity. Unless they are under government orders not to reveal that. Oooops! Comcast makes AT&T look like amateurs when it comes to violating your privacy and is granted complete immunity by the law.

I'm not knocking your wise choice to avoid Windows, but make no mistake: you are NOT using any kind of privacy-hardened PC just because you use Linux. ALWAYS assume 100% of what is stored on your PC and 100% of your activity on the internet is observable. You can frustrate the Windows script kiddies, but not a decent hacker.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:35 | 5809661 Thirst Mutilator
Thirst Mutilator's picture

Here's one way around it

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:07 | 5809817 Tall Tom
Tall Tom's picture

You believe yourself clever by stating that there is no way around it? You want us to accept that our Civil Liberties, our Sovereign Rights, are being violated?

 

There is a way around it. REVOLT.

 

Bullets to the Corporate officers' heads are what is in order.

 

Sorry is not anywhere near good enough.

 

Some may just be nearing their limit.  The price of Gasoline will definitely be soaring as a result of acting.

 

It will not be A single planned and engineered explosion by the Oil Company Executives, for which they will not be prosecuted..Some of us have had the best teachers...the criminals themselves.

 

And with that there will be no escape to New Zealand. Jets, even Private Jets, take fuel to fly. Without fuel the oligarchs will be a captive audience.

 

Oil refineries and the Tank Farms are the primary targets in any violent revolt. The resultant social unrest due to lack of food will destroy the rest, the unprepared...

 

So do you think that you are clever through incitement?

 

Go ahead and watch me...keep watching me as I am watching you watching me.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:49 | 5809990 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

"...You believe yourself clever by stating that there is no way around it?.."

Me?? No, I consider myself knowledgeable enough in a technical sense to know that I can't outwit them - they have more time, money, manufacturers' technical details and pure evil than I will ever have at my disposal. I don't know if they are spying on me, but it's folly to assume that a certain OS, firewall or AV program is ever going to guarantee my right to privacy.

"...You want us to accept that our Civil Liberties, our Sovereign Rights, are being violated?..."

Jesus, Tom. Who pissed in your corn flakes this morning? They HAVE BEEN and ARE being violated right now. The fact that you can't protect yourself from their spying is not an endorsement of their spying. I'm warning people not to be naive about the issue.

"...So do you think that you are clever through incitement?..."

Yeah, uhh... what? 

"...Go ahead and watch me...keep watching me as I am watching you watching me..."

OK, I'm pretty sure you're not even responding to my post anymore. You're not, are you? That would be kind of... disturbing.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:35 | 5810180 Cadavre
Cadavre's picture

It's getting worse in every venu. On line merchants selling "naked" inventory ship the wrong item, then bill for the return. My Jeep was in the shop. A prospect had a stopover and ask for a meet up at an Air Port Inn. Took a cab and the driver always seemed to be going down the wrong street. Anywaze, I meet the prospect and my phone starts vibrating and I ignore. So, I get another cab to get back to the casa and look at my phone history. All from some "private" number. While I was riding home, the phone rings - the display shows private number - I answer like a Texan, "Who the f*ck is this". The guy said his name was Joe, asked if I remembered meeting him at st convience store and asks if I want a "good time" with his girlfriend. I respond with lone star grace and implore, "Don't ever call this number again, bitch!" 

Not all is lost, I got an email a few weeks later with a picture. It was sent to Postmaster <myemail at myemailDNS.com>, It was from a chick I did not know, with an email account at USA.com. She told she had read my profile, and believed I was a dude she wanted to get to know -> Click->Delete.

Dropbox, genieo's omnibar, iCloud, iTune and a plethora of other "Helpers", along with mobile me; are all desk top harvesters with root credentials fouling up the CPU with incessant requests to send packets to some off shore DNS.

If ya use windows, the last most secure OS is XP Pro without service packs. Even if you open the services dialog and switch off stuff like QoS, remote desktop, remote help, auto update, error reporting, scripting objects etc etc, ya still have to drill through the Group Policy and blank out all the weird little ports. Does that make it secure - shit - right now I look at the connect icon in my service tray and be thinking, "If it ain't blinking does that mean that my desktop is really not transmitting or receiving packets?"

You can erase your INDEX.DAT files. Restablish empty ones. The set their attribute to read only and your history will not be recorded. In Apple, the Adobe Reader doesn't nag like the Window's version, with a pop up asking if you want to Turn Adobe Javascript off - like ya didn't really mean it when you initially set it off. Off or On, it don't mean nothing - it's just to give us the illusion we are in control.

HOW TO GET THEM SECRET BACK DOOR KEYS: If ya got a spare Windows desktop, with IIS installed, but not enabled. And you can connect through a dialup or DSL (have not tried it with a router) you can harvest backdoor keys and the scripts the NSASSES and other tentacles of the fascioligarchy use to snoop your desk top. Yurn on Windoes firewall, Disable the installed ISS. Connect to the internet. Open the browser to your home page, and go have a few beers. When you get back, and find that somehow miraculously that IIS was enabled as well as the IIS (IsIS !). Check your event log. You'll see that some guest account logged in as an administrator, enabled IIS and did a whole bnuch of reads and emails. The event log will show the key used to authenticate the login, and the script will be cached is some randomly named folder. 

I snagged images of all those events and have the keys stashed away on a CD in a safe deposit box. I manually cleaned my drive and registry, uninstalled IIS, did a reinstall of my NO SP OS. Blocked a bunch of adware sites, google apis and (of course) the update DNS associated with my router manufacturer. My INDEX.DAT files have not been written to for years. ... the illusion of control - but at least it is partially verifiable.

I noticed on OS X there is no uninstall for iCloud or Mobile Me. (haven't dug in yet) Did some recursive default setting through the console to "hobble" that activity. Now, when looking at the console, it's filled with request denied. 

The spying may be for commercial and trade secret sniffing. But what it really seems to be is a snipe hunt for any evidence of malfeasance or corruption. Does the FBI destroy evidence. Of course they do, and it is not limited to HD snip wipes,

To incubate a proto police state takes loads false flags, evidence destruction and fear mongering, well garnished with a pinch of murder and a tsp full of  lethal house cleaning.

Without it, there would be no fat budgets for the fascioligarchy's gestapo.  Efrem Zimbalist Jr is turning over in his grave.

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:55 | 5809430 Socratic Dog
Socratic Dog's picture

Who are the bad people?

Just look for those you are not allowed to criticize (per Voltaire).

The tribe sorta jumps out.

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 05:35 | 5811457 Cadavre
Cadavre's picture

Who are the bad people?

This one maybe hard to handle for some, but the bad people, the peeps and sheep making this happen and by allowing it to happen and even paying a generous tithing and offering up their kids to defend WarMcWhore CORP and the FED Financing for these little alchemist-ish experiments turning blood to gold and murderers into heros, well those bad people are the people behind the eyes of the face we see in the mirror. 

It's US, You me the fat lady down the street. It is our faukt this shit is going on.

It's not the fault of the small collective of our fawning self aggrandizing  pathologically corrupt Diebold Selected neo-social fasioligarchal's eployees shoutung "eight inches or less" on CSPAN waltzing to Mephisto Gypsy Quartets changing money with the Wall Street pimps running the K Street Kiddie Brothels, and tugging Tugging Mr, Big;s G spot on the steps of our temples and institutions of government, all, and sadly, fatally crippled by false notions of exceptional alpha status symptomatically expressed as the more than obvious waining of instinctive, nature given, survival skills, grab-assibg as they shuffle a Lemming-esque 2 step up the slaughter house chute where "food for thought" morphs to a tangible that will eventually be shat out the bungs of everyone in the commons.

It ain't nobodies' fault but ours - so be genteel when the time comes and remind yourself that, but for the grace of god, those squished heads of media darlings and high society gadflies are not mine.

Crash - bang - shiy - some punks just demolished my soapbox with their skateboards.

Sun, 02/22/2015 - 11:21 | 5814956 Dizzy Malscience
Dizzy Malscience's picture

.gov is made up of psychopaths, sociopaths and enablers.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:01 | 5809472 A Nanny Moose
A Nanny Moose's picture

Bad government is redundant. Nothing moral will ever result from an entity which is required to steal in order to fund its existence.

If you want to find the "bad" people, simply look peer behind the curtain of the entity which has a monopoly right to initiate force within a geographic region, and the firepower to destroy everything around it.

Where else would bad people naturally seek employment?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:48 | 5809722 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

That is the salient point.

Understood by at most 1% of the population.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:59 | 5810040 gafgroocK
gafgroocK's picture

 

 

 

That's it! After this post I am junking my computer and IPhone!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:47 | 5808977 SethDealer
SethDealer's picture

whew, glad I bought Toshiba~

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:56 | 5809009 Skateboarder
Skateboarder's picture

Same shit, different mfg. asshole.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:28 | 5809237 random999
random999's picture

I'm not so sure.

There is no doubt chinese and americans are the worst comes to this kind of stuff.

The americans do it with finesse, chinese just copy without finesse.

As for the rest of the world, not sooo much, but ever more...

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:48 | 5809388 Lost My Shorts
Lost My Shorts's picture

Actually, the Superfish adware-hackware installed by Lenovo was Israeli.  (Big surprise.)

What was not so clear is -- whether Lenovo just collected a few yuan per machine to install Superfish, or benefitted from the ongoing adware revenue.

What's totally clear:  Mossad and perhaps their NSA friends have access to any machine that ever had Superfish installed.

Reading about Superfish and Komodo (another Israeli company supplying the hackware technology) will open your eyes. 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:34 | 5809635 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

From PCWorld:

How to remove the dangerous Superfish adware preinstalled on Lenovo PCs

How do I know if my Lenovo PC has Superfish preinstalled?


It should be easy to discover if your PC came with Superfish preloaded. The adware intrinsic to Superfish is designed to inject visual price-comparison ads into the web pages you visit, in a “Visual Search results” section “powered by VisualDiscovery.” If you see that, you’re affected (though maybe “infected” is the better word to use).

 

Update: Browsing to this website will quickly let you know if you have Superfish installed. Thanks, Filippo Valsorda! Lastpass also tossed up a website that can check for Superfish.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:46 | 5809712 reTARD
reTARD's picture

Superfish is based out of Palo Alto, CA. Right in the heart of SiCON Valley. They also make iOS and Android apps.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/superfish

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:52 | 5809924 L Bean
L Bean's picture

Israeli execs

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adipinhas

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/danit-raanan-ideses/34/646/267?trk=biz_empl...

http://il.linkedin.com/in/chertok

http://il.linkedin.com/in/yonitgruber

http://il.linkedin.com/in/benjaminrkatz

Adi Pinhas "Invented digital video recording for the surveillance market. Large scale high quality video recording." according to his bio.

This guy has patents in the US for many things related to photo analysis and facial recognition  - ummm.....

but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the 'benign' tracking he's just been caught doing.

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 01:09 | 5811245 Blankenstein
Blankenstein's picture

 

"Superfish, which launched in 2006 in Israel and moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley, makes desktop and mobile applications that allow consumers to search for items from online retailers by taking a picture of something they like -- a couch, necklace or cute kitten at the pet store -- and uploading it to the app."

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27246085/q-adi-pinhas-founder-and...

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:29 | 5809241 7.62x54r
7.62x54r's picture

I think he was being sarcastic. I would like to know exactly which HD models the NSA has rooted, though.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:37 | 5809668 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

Why would they skip any models?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:34 | 5808917 farmboy
farmboy's picture

Obvious, this is no news. All are guilty.

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:41 | 5808956 max2205
max2205's picture

All this Govt FB Corp spying tracking and monitoring  will go down in history as the crime of the modern ages.

 

Fuck em all....back to the abacus 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:19 | 5809145 Alea Iactaest
Alea Iactaest's picture

@ Max

Go down in history? The victor writes history. This shit won't even get a footnote.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:17 | 5809862 Tall Tom
Tall Tom's picture

So you are defeated even before the battle?

 

Who says that they will emerge as the victor? They will be vanquished when the people begin to hunger. They will be rooted out and killed.

 

You are a defeatist?

 

Choose your targets wisely for optimal impact.

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 03:48 | 5811381 boattrash
boattrash's picture

I don't mean to sound sadistic, but I think they deserve to go face-up on the guillotine, with their eyelids stapled to their foreheads, so they can see the blade coming.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:23 | 5809181 Arnold
Arnold's picture

This data collection issue may be top ten; replacing the Protestant work ethic with the Free Shit Army, I can argue, would be as you describe, the crime of the modern age.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:03 | 5809486 The9thDoctor
The9thDoctor's picture

I disagree.  Protestant work ethic is becoming more irrelevant by the day due to automation.  As for welfare, it will be an inevitability that everyone will be on it due to the lack of jobs from automation and the masses will spend their issued currency on goods and services provided by machines and/or A.I.

There's a lot of talk of "can kicking" on Zero Hedge, and how the current economic system will collapse.  Well, this is the endgame because today's economic system will be totally irrelevant in an automated society.

We are seeing the final phases of exponential capitalist growth, and that growth hit the saturation level in the year 2000 with the tech boom.  Now all we have left is speculative bubbles until the current economic system is phased out totally with automation and masses dependent on a guaranteed minimum income.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:50 | 5809737 michael777
michael777's picture

The price of a guaranteed minimum income will no doubt be complete submission to the State.

Now if they'd find a way to do guaranteed maximum income, I'd be in.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:06 | 5809502 A Nanny Moose
Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:25 | 5809211 Arnold
Arnold's picture

Bro, I B in cent!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:34 | 5808923 pods
pods's picture

I was going to text this to my wife, but realized that since the NSA hacked basically all SIM cards that it would get me on yet another list.

Just one more reason why this "consumer society" needs to die a quick death.

pods

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:46 | 5808971 Ignatius
Ignatius's picture

Gee, I said the same thing to pods when he pushed me off that over-turned 5-gallon bucket while watching his wife take a pee:

"I messed up badly here, I made a mistake."

Doc says the jaw is fine and I'll be walking again in 12 weeks.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:50 | 5809401 pods
pods's picture

lol

:)

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:20 | 5809157 Alea Iactaest
Alea Iactaest's picture

@ pods

You (and I) are already on "the" list. The only question: what's your threat score?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:29 | 5809247 Joe A
Joe A's picture

Everybody that has ever commented on ZH is on that list. At least we are in good company.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:31 | 5809258 7.62x54r
7.62x54r's picture

visit free_nsa_threat_score.com !

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:36 | 5808928 jazz571027
jazz571027's picture

Thank you Edward Snowden - keep it coming

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:39 | 5808945 cigarEngineer
cigarEngineer's picture

Snowden belongs on Mt Rushmore

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:37 | 5808930 BustainMovealota
BustainMovealota's picture

Might as well out your ass in the air and let BigCorp have its way with ya.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:38 | 5808939 ThroxxOfVron
ThroxxOfVron's picture

Inter-connectedness, the internet of things, the digital lifestyle, the closed environment: 

The great technological straight-jacket of the corporatist statist oligarchy.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:51 | 5808943 Renfield
Renfield's picture

How is this not the felonious crime of computer tampering? I'm asking b/c it doesn't seem that anyone at Superfish or Lenovo is under indictment.

Yes, I know we have a criminal government over an ignorant population and that's why. But I think it's important to be vigilant in pointing out where these actions are not only immoral, but they are illegal too. The government can go ahead and change the law but a government that selectively ignores/enforces or unilaterally changes its own rules, is by definition a rogue government.

If we surrender by not pointing these things our, or just moaning about "it's all fucked and there's nothing we can do", then we'll continue to get the government we deserve. (Why hello there Rothschild.)

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:22 | 5809180 Alea Iactaest
Alea Iactaest's picture

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what they may. -- Daniel Webster

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:39 | 5808947 laomei
laomei's picture

eh, it's a us company, odd how they leave that part of it out.  

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:03 | 5809032 ceilidh_trail
ceilidh_trail's picture

Errr, Actually a Chineese multinational. Of course, I know that you already know this.    http://www.lenovo.com/lenovo/us/en/our_company.html

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:10 | 5809067 laomei
laomei's picture

Not talking about lenovo, talking about superfish

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:11 | 5809078 Caleb Abell
Caleb Abell's picture

Actually, Lenovo Group LTD is a Chinese company.  They used to manufacture the Thinkpad for IBM before IBM was run out of the PC business.  They bought the line from IBM and now use their own name.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:20 | 5809577 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

Then there's nothing to worry about:

Our Values

At Lenovo we view our culture as a critical asset as important as an effective business model. We call our culture the Lenovo Way, and at its most basic, that culture is reflected in the statement: We do what we say and own what we do.

Our values serve as the foundation of our company and define who we are and how we work. Principal among them are:

  • Serving Customers
  • Trust and Integrity << See? Right here!
  • Teamwork Across Cultures
  • Innovation and Entrepreneurial Spirit
Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:40 | 5808950 MayIMommaDogFac...
MayIMommaDogFace2theBananaPatch's picture

I'm going to build my own laptop -- just as soon as the silicon crystals I am growing get large enough.  /sarc

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:41 | 5808952 Joebloinvestor
Joebloinvestor's picture

Next will be bundled software certified by the NSA.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:24 | 5809199 swmnguy
swmnguy's picture

"Next"?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:29 | 5809245 random999
random999's picture

it came with the last automatic windows upload

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:41 | 5808955 clade7
clade7's picture

Survival tip:  If ever lost out in the deep woods and seriously injured...take off clothes and start jacking off...somebody thats been watching you will be along shortly...

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:49 | 5808986 SethDealer
SethDealer's picture

I bet this idea will be used on "Man vs Wild"

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:42 | 5808958 Heavy
Heavy's picture

That guy with the "The End is Near" sign might be right some time about now.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:43 | 5808962 pragmatic hobo
pragmatic hobo's picture

another reason to wipe the drive clean on any new machine and do clean install of os ... or better yet move to linux.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:09 | 5809064 chunga
chunga's picture

When I was a kid I remember installing Red Hat with a box full of floppies. Back then it seemed that there was a small percentage of hardware that wouldn't work right that I just happened to have. I just installed it again and lucky me...all these pcs later and yup...I have moar of the small percentage of hardware that doesn't work right on Linux. 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:34 | 5809272 7.62x54r
7.62x54r's picture

LINUX has gotten better at this.

Ubuntu 14.10 worked 100% out of the box in an Acer netbook, and just for giggles I installed it on a 2011 MacBook. It ran the Mac without any bobbles.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:50 | 5809397 McMolotov
McMolotov's picture

I installed Crunchbang 11 on an old laptop I bought on ebay, and it runs as fast as a new machine, maybe even faster. Took some getting used to, but it worked out of the box.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:06 | 5809498 chunga
chunga's picture

There are only a few things that don't work for me on this modified HP desktop. The dual monitors don't work independantly (Radeon driver), of course the multi-function Canon printer, and many of the features of the Xonar soundcard are gonzo.

I think a lot of the hardware manufacturers are pressured to not release their own Linux drivers and also not release specs so as to thwart others from making full featured drivers. Like at one time at least MS Office would not play with Lotus 123 even thought Lotus 123 would play with MS.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:19 | 5809135 MisterMousePotato
MisterMousePotato's picture

The NSA has secretly embedded spyware in the firmware of your harddrive. You can 'wipe' the drive as many times as you like using any kind of drive wiping technology (including military grade, The Best There Is type stuff), and it will not rid your computer (viz., the harddrive) of the spyware.

Actually, it is not spyware. It is worse than that. It allows others to do anything - anything at all - with your computer and its contents. Without you knowing. Read, delete, alter. Download kiddie porn. Pirated video files. Etc.

Anything at all. And there's nothing you can do about it. Buy another harddrive? New from NewEgg? It comes with the spyware preinstalled.

Using Linux is no answer. Makes no difference.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:24 | 5809202 Alea Iactaest
Alea Iactaest's picture

^ This

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:41 | 5809288 7.62x54r
7.62x54r's picture

The HDs the NSA have gotten STUXNET bootstraps into are limited to a few server model HDs, but yea, that level of rooting can't be fixed except via a boot sector / NVRAM rewrite.

The question here is who was targeted. They wanted to get STUXNET into servers and PCs running Iranian Seimans chipset centrifuges, and STUXNET was very good at doing this, until the little kiddies in the Whitehouse spilled the beans.

Once in a long while the NSA actually does their fucking jobs.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:44 | 5808965 ymom11
ymom11's picture

I feel defeated.  I no longer try to hide things about myself.  I just try to keep a somewhat low profile.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:48 | 5808983 Renfield
Renfield's picture

Don't give up! As Heavy says a few comments up, "The End Is Near". :-)

If the end were still far away, the government would still be wearing a mask over its iron face.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:44 | 5808966 Dewey Cheatum Howe
Dewey Cheatum Howe's picture

http://now.avg.com/malware-is-still-spying-on-you-after-your-mobile-is-off/

Newly discovered Android malware hijacks your phone when you believe you have switched it off.

...

First seen in China, the malware spreads through Chinese app stores with around 10,000 devices infected so far.

The malware affects versions of Android older than v.5 (Lollipop) and requires root permission to hijack the shut down process.

...

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:45 | 5808967 Smiley
Smiley's picture

They are only sorry they got caught.  This is business as usual.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:54 | 5808995 Renfield
Renfield's picture

<<The company’s Chief Technology Officer now says, “We messed up badly here,” and “We made a mistake.”>>

"We committed a felony."

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:44 | 5809342 7.62x54r
7.62x54r's picture

Worse than that. They drove new customers away. In return for a pittance.

Which is why they are groveling now.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:49 | 5808985 rsnoble
rsnoble's picture

I wonder if you could send back your Lenovo and get out of paying for it based on this?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:52 | 5808993 Duc888
Duc888's picture

 

 

 

"This is so flagrant I have to imagine that even the NSA is shocked."

 

 

Well, no, NSA probably just paid them to do this.  Business is business after all.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:57 | 5809014 rsnoble
rsnoble's picture

Problem solved: "Matter of national security".

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 15:55 | 5809007 rsnoble
rsnoble's picture

Also, someone was onto Lenovo. This is a total pr stunt,coming out and admitting it and telling everyone how sorry they are before the real story came out.  Rot in hell deuchbags.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:00 | 5809027 Stevious
Stevious's picture

Is this really that much different when Sony installed a rootkit on your computer what, a decade ago?  It installed when you played a Sony disk.

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:21 | 5809174 MisterMousePotato
MisterMousePotato's picture

Worse. At least a rootkit can be detected and eliminated. The software embedded in the firmware of the hardware is there no matter what.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:02 | 5809035 Jack Burton
Jack Burton's picture

 

"The Superfish program is a total disaster.

It has image recognition algorithms which essentially monitor what a user is looking at… then suggests relevant ads based on what it thinks you might like."

Pre-installed tracking software. This is what we pay for when we buy a computer? When, I ask, will the customer begin to exert some influence on capitalism? Companies that fuck us should go bankrupt, if capitalism worked, these like this who screw the buyers should go without sales and die out. But in the computer economy, we seem to tolerate anything, any crime, any nuisance, any invasion of privacy, any built in defct. When it comes to computer devices, we will accept just about anything they do to us, as long as the basic device does what it says it will.

A story like this should END that company in a heart beat. But I doubt anyone even cares.

Anyways, from where I sit, using "AD BLOCK" on FIRE FOX, I don't see ads, any ads. I used my brother's computer over Christmas when I was at their house, I could not recognize my usual websites and blogs. All I saw was advertizing, ad videos, flashing ads, video ads, pop up ads, FUCK! The whole screen was a maze of flashing ads, with the blog sitting in an ocean of ads!

In pre AD BLOCK days, before I shifted to Firefox and AD BLOCK. I used to read Mish's blog. It slowly filled up with ads to be nearly impossible. I used Blue Tape, to mask out flashing and video ads on the sides, in order to read his postings. Honestly, till Christmas, I didn't know that blogs still looked that bad.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:17 | 5809129 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

"When, I ask, will the customer begin to exert some influence on capitalism?"

 

Can't say.

We'll need to have some capitalism first.  It was fatally wounded in 1913, finally deceased in 1932, and replaced by a thicket government regulation, price controls, and 'rule by "experts"'.

What we have is at best corporatist, and at worst oligarchical.

And that is not just the US...but everywhere.

Thieves always complain how poor are their countries, but never consider that their countries are poor because the productive see no point in producing more for them to steal.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:19 | 5809575 michael777
michael777's picture

"... the productive see no point in producing more for them to steal"

This is precisely where I'm at.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:35 | 5809274 Mi Naem
Mi Naem's picture

Virtually everyone buys a PC on Price 1st, features 2nd, percieved reliability and support a distant 3rd. 

Big vendors keep their prices low by commoditizing their buyers with spyware, nagware, free-trial timeouts, etc.  They know most folks haven't got a clue what all this crap on their computer is, and the accelerated obsolesence brings the buyer back into the market sooner - MS helps make sure of that. 

So capitalism is working as well as it can in the land of sleepwalkers. 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:55 | 5809765 skipjack
skipjack's picture

Sure, can you tell me what hard drive I can buy that the NSA hasn't compromised ? How about video card firmware - has anyone analyzed that yet ? See, if you want to have a PC, and an Internet connection, you have no choice but to be spied upon. It's just that simple. The only way to boycott this shit is to have no electronics. Period. Until I can buy a homebrew computer from someone who manufactures their own motherbards, hard drives, display chipsets, memory, and writes the firmware, bios and drivers in a transparent way, then there is no protection. Anywhere. It's all compromised.

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 11:08 | 5811798 HamFistedIdiot
HamFistedIdiot's picture

Didn't Blackberry go bankrupt because the CEO refused to give a backdoor to the NSA? I don't think there are any software or hardware companies in the US who have gotten large who haven't been forced to surrender their code or BIOS. It's all for our safety, of course. /sarc

I've been thinking of going back to dial-up again, then my data couldn't be sucked up so fast. I have FiOS with upload speeds 5x faster than what I am paying for (30Mbps). It must be .gov subsizing the extra bandwidth to make "checking in" on me a little easier for them.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:04 | 5810075 Paveway IV
Paveway IV's picture

OT: Ukraine Junta crosses Jack Burton's red line

Natalia Poklonskaya was indicted by Ukraine today for High Treason along with 413 other members of the Crimean Prosecutors Office.

In lieu of a trial, Burton has made an offer to Ukraine to spank her bare bottom really hard as punishment. No word yet from the Ukraine prosecutors' office spokesman. Russian Senior Prosecutor Poklonskaya could not be reached for comment. ZH demands Burton's punishment, if approved, be recorded to allow thourough inspection for potential human rights violations.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 22:21 | 5810751 StychoKiller
StychoKiller's picture

Check this out as well:  http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:03 | 5809039 bluskyes
bluskyes's picture

Who leaves the default OS images on their computer anyways?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:08 | 5809055 GIABO
GIABO's picture

That motherfucker should be swinging from an oak tree. String em' up!!!!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:10 | 5809066 GoldSilverBitcoinBug
GoldSilverBitcoinBug's picture

I smell business opportunities here: Selling software and hardware who are spying NSA proof and being audited regularly by white hat hackers.

Multi-billions dollar business here.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:10 | 5809069 collon88
collon88's picture

Speaking of intrusive and irritating ads, ZH has become a veritable cesspool of them. I recently downloaded Adblock Plus for IE. Now, when I go to ZH, ALL, and I mean ALL of those distracting videos and ALL other print ads are gone. What a relief to not have the equivalent of a 3 year old constantly yelling, "Look at me daddy, daddy, DADDY !!!".  Slap!  Take that you little punk.  

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:27 | 5809228 Mi Naem
Mi Naem's picture

Amen, brother!  In fact, I would gladly support ZH by disabling my ad blocking software on their site, as I do with several other sites I frequent.  However, ZH seems to have no standards for the aesthetic of their site, nor the bandwidth demand on my CPU and video card.  If they were to develop such standards consistent with their users' interests, and enforce them, I would gladly drop the blocking and put more ad revenue in their coffers.  Unfortunately, I see no evidence that there are any Tylers who care enough to make the time for such things. 

On the other hand, the day that they disable site access for those who block their obnoxious ads is my last day here.  I dare say they'd lose a good 30-40% + of their other daily views on that same day. 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:09 | 5809515 The9thDoctor
The9thDoctor's picture

I don't mind the plethora of GIF or JPEG banner ads on Rense.com, but the ads on ZeroHedge are beyond annoying as my browser crashes constantly on here.  That's why I run a noscript type of extension so I can at least use this site.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:20 | 5809582 michael777
michael777's picture

There are ads here? Seriously?

I've blocked all of them so long ago, I wouldn't know.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 23:05 | 5810884 StychoKiller
StychoKiller's picture

Check this out as well:  http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:14 | 5809094 Stu455
Stu455's picture

Boycott Lenovo products. 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:22 | 5809186 HomoHominiLupus
HomoHominiLupus's picture

+1 -  those are the three key words. I sincerely albeit unreasonalby hope that these fuckers never sell another computer in the U.S. again.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:24 | 5809600 michael777
michael777's picture

What makes you think Lenovo is the only PC manufacturer doing this?

I think it's a safe bet that they all do it. Apple, too.

You can wipe your PC and install Linux, but there's still the hard drive firmware, the system BIOS, rootkits, etc.

You can't win.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:12 | 5809842 reTARD
reTARD's picture

Anti-Lenovo this, anti-Microsoft that, etc. You've on the fucking World Wide Web! What would you expect?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:16 | 5809119 I Write Code
I Write Code's picture

Microsoft was looking at Gator? Gatorfish? Back fifteen years ago, one of the first adware/spyware/malware programs, and was looking at *buying* Gator and never did do that, but they left IE open to it on purpose.

I suspect I have some government-controlled and thus anti-virus invisible spyware on my workstation, so they already know I'm on ZH, but then I'm sure ZH is already monitored separately anyway.  LOL

Write only happy stuff.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:25 | 5809607 michael777
michael777's picture

They've definitely won. You can't have free speech if you can only write "happy stuff."

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:20 | 5809156 dumbStruck
dumbStruck's picture

Class action law suit coming? Defective and dangerous software ? Violation of constitutional rights of customers ? What do the banks have to say regarding someone intercepting confidential fianicial information between them and their customers ? Definately felonies have been committed here. They're sorry they were caught not that they committed fraud et al. in the first place. What are the odds of prosecution ? I'll bet the NSA amoung other three letter groups knew about the malware and exploited it.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:21 | 5809165 gcjohns1971
gcjohns1971's picture

Lenovo did not 'just fuck up'.

 

They burglarized their customer's homes at the behest of ad-salesmen for the purpose of wire-tapping in return for a bribe.

The corporate leadership should be in jail or swinging from a rope.

The prosecutor, judge, or governors who refuse to prosecute them can join them.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:35 | 5809278 irishlink
irishlink's picture

Judging by the comments Lenovo better blow the whistle on their competition " pretty quickly'

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:24 | 5809204 Spungo
Spungo's picture

Are you telling me computers come loaded with bullshit? How on earth did Apple Computers know this years in advance and run TV commercials about it? Fucking time machines! (or it's completely obvious that PCs come loaded with bullshit and only the most retarded person is shocked to learn this)

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:26 | 5809225 authorized user
authorized user's picture

Any wonder why many countries are suspicious of hardware providers?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:27 | 5809620 michael777
michael777's picture

Lenovo is IBM. China bans IBM for good reason.

Companies are stupid to do this spying, in one way, but their greed gets in the way every single time. Ultimately, they win, they stay in business, and people still pay.

It's pretty f'ing disgusting, if you ask me.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:51 | 5809743 Jorgen
Jorgen's picture

"Lenovo is IBM. China bans IBM for good reason."

Lenovo is not IBM. They acquired IBM's PC making business in 2005.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:50 | 5809996 michael777
michael777's picture

Like I said, same thing. IBM begat Lenovo. What's the diff?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:28 | 5809235 authorized user
authorized user's picture

This is still not as bad as the smart phone apps that are 100% spyware.

Where is the outrage over these hacks?

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:28 | 5809238 Panic Mode
Panic Mode's picture

Too fucking late and pack your fucking bag

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:29 | 5809246 irishlink
irishlink's picture

I do not worry about this anymore. Every day I google some really stupid stuff and as so many of the worlds citizens are doing the same the system will eventually become redundant . As of yesterday , judging by the adverts hitting my screen. They cannot decide whether I am make or female!!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:31 | 5809255 permarig
permarig's picture

Apple's latest OS iteration, Yosemite, has (have had?) some phone-home "features" too. But in general too, Apple's also going downhill with their OS.

https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home

Of course. Icahn can't stop pumping it, yeah right.

Quite a few Linksys (Cisco) and Netgear routers have (have had?) backdoors.

https://github.com/elvanderb/TCP-32764

I don't think the mid-term future looks that bright for some of the usual suspect IT megacorps in the personal computing space right now. The trend is up for Linux and friends in this space too, but it'll still take time.

There are some interesting ideas/technologies surfacing, not only in IT, that could help to migrate away from centralized approaches.

But of course, that would mean less control for the corporate fascists over you and would threaten their 'sell the same slave-manufactured shit with minimal net improvements over and over again' business model. And at this point, we could tie this into the 'why they're so desperate to create new wars' issue again.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:12 | 5810104 Jorgen
Jorgen's picture

"The trend is up for Linux and friends in this space too, but it'll still take time."

Myself being a Linux fan, I concur, but there is a Y2K-like problem down the Linux road:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/20/linux_year_2038_problem/?mt=1424...


Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:38 | 5809292 irishlink
irishlink's picture

Tomorrow at EST lets all google "LENOVA fraudulent spy ware" that will sort them!!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:38 | 5809298 irishlink
irishlink's picture

Make that 12 noon EST

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:39 | 5809301 f16hoser
f16hoser's picture

So fix it Mother Fuckers!!! Before I toss my laptop into the trash and tell all my friends not to buy Lenovo computers.... and I know a lot of people!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:39 | 5809308 NoWayJose
NoWayJose's picture

Other than dumping your electronic gadgets, your best choices are to do all your web surfing on a tablet (on which you have no apps and on which you store nothing!) and do not use any Internet browsing on any PC or on your smartphone.  Do not join any social networks or even look at social network sites on your PC or smartphone.  Do not do any Internet banking that links the Internet to your bank accounts, or any on-line bill paying.  Otherwise, you might as well assume that everything you do is open to the pubic and to advertisers, and that you eventually will have some crook get to your bank accounts as easily as they get to your credit cards!

And even if you do all this, it is only a partial solution that is not foolproof.  

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:35 | 5809658 michael777
michael777's picture

That doesn't sound like much fun.

I suggest blocking all their ads, every single one of them, on every site.

I see ZERO ads on the internet. My tablet (iPad), out of the box, was full of them, so I use non-built-in web browser with ad blocking installed. Open all web links in your ad-blocking web browser, and you're fine.

 

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:40 | 5809315 Dre4dwolf
Dre4dwolf's picture

This is why when you buy a laptop the first thing you do is wipe the thing and install your own tweaked and slimmed down versions of the operating system. . . 

I cant tell you how many family members buy new computers and the damned things are damn near un-usable with all the bloat ware . . . till I wipe the thing.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:17 | 5809566 michael777
michael777's picture

Right, but the ennesay has their backdoor in the hard drive firmware, and probably the BIOS, so wiping doesn't really keep them from spying on you.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:17 | 5810121 smacker
smacker's picture

The first thing you do is rip out the HDD and replace it with an SSD, which are N times faster and much more robust.

Then you "install your own tweaked and slimmed down versions of the operating system"

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:50 | 5809339 pashley1411
pashley1411's picture

Citizen!

"below is your weekly report card of activites, courtesy of the NSA (Utah), in cooperation with big businesses everywhere"

a)   displays poor citizenship for not watching the President's speech on 2/17.   this is your 32nd warning

b)   displays poor citizenship for watching alternative news sites

c)   displays poor citzenship for not watching the President's speech on 2/18

d)  possession of a firearm.   this is your 52nd warning

e)  displays poor citzenship for not watching the President's speech on 2/19   

f)  Attempting to cover-up e) by placing a maniken on the couch.    We can tell, dipshit.

g)   has been identified as a consumer of man-women pornography.    this is your 44th warning

h)   displays poor citzenship by replacing toilet paper with denominations carrying the President's image.   Yea, we can tell that too. 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:51 | 5809406 NoWayJose
NoWayJose's picture

We could ask the NSA to run their anti-spyware and anti-virus software across the entire Internet and on every computer.  That would fix eveerything.  I think it's called something like SKYNet.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 16:53 | 5809417 NoWayJose
NoWayJose's picture

The guys that do this kind of software (besides making money), do so with the thought that they are helping to get more meaningful ads to you based on your own likes and dislikes.  No different than Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:01 | 5809475 SilverFish
SilverFish's picture

Oldest goddamn trick in the book.......

 

 

 

- Invent way to spy on your customers.

- Create bullshit apology, put in safe for future use.

- Release product you invented to spy on your customers.

- Make profits

- Take bullshit apology out of safe and release it upon the world.

- Rinse and repeat, if necessary.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:10 | 5809519 buzzsaw99
buzzsaw99's picture

1) they aren't sorry

2) they all do it.

software people, hardware people, they build in security breaches, back doors, spying is a way of life for those maggots. trust no-one and nothing.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:12 | 5809536 michael777
michael777's picture

Superfish has two offices. One in Palo Alto, CA. The other in Israel.

There is absolutely no mention of the technology used by Lenovo on their website, but look what they do offer: "LikeThat" apps that do a "visual search".

Nice Board of Directors, too. 

http://www.home.superfish.com/

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 17:29 | 5809616 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

"The tracking software is made by a company called Superfish, which apparently paid some “very minor compensation” to Lenovo for putting the software on people’s computers."

So I'm reading this and find myself thinking, at first, "A Chinese company did this? But Lenovo is Chinese, and they wouldn't admit such a thing." So I then think, "Has to be Zion, and the Chinese are calling them out." So I do TWO searches and discover this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/02/20/komodia-lenovo-sup...
 Summary: "Komodia [Superfish] founder and former Israeli intelligence agent Barak Weichselbaum"
"In a brief email conversation with Barak Weichselbaum, Komodia’s founder who was once a programmer in Israel’s IDF’s Intelligence Core, he said the company was not hiding behind DDoS claims and that the attack was real"

Well, that didn't take long.

The banksters need to repay us.

 

Those that don't see Zion are still bumping around in the dark.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:26 | 5810156 L Bean
L Bean's picture

Already Komodia ppl are playing all innocent and throwing Superfish under the bus, as if they weren't just the dopey middleman in all of this.

Superfish will be disappear and something else wil crop up in its place, led by the people w the same 'expertise' ofc, allowing Komodia to live on in perpetuity in some other 'host'. Rinse, repeat.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 21:22 | 5810572 Sir Edge
Sir Edge's picture

Bravo... KChrisc... Nice Background Investigation... Excellent Find...

++Plus One Kabillion...

Jesus... at this rate i am going to run out of Kabillions... /s

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:31 | 5809916 ReasonForLife
ReasonForLife's picture

You made a mistake and you're sorry?  You can't put an apology in your pocket.  You violated people's privacy and trust, you deserve to fail now.  That is when you will learn to not make mistakes anymore.  I don't forgive you, sorry.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:34 | 5809930 argentuman
argentuman's picture

Quick - someone tell me how to short Lenovo

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:41 | 5809957 Platinum
Platinum's picture

Throwing it into a tub of water while it's running will work well.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 18:44 | 5809950 L Bean
L Bean's picture

 

Israeli execs

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adipinhas

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/danit-raanan-ideses/34/646/267?trk=biz_empl...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravithermoni

http://il.linkedin.com/in/chertok

Adi Pinhas "Invented digital video recording for the surveillance market. Large scale high quality video recording." according to his bio.

This guy has patents in the US for many things related to photo analysis and facial recognition of 'persons of interest' and the databases required for such  - ummm.....

but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the 'benign' tracking he's just been caught doing.

 

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:00 | 5810047 reTARD
reTARD's picture

Everywhere on MSM, including many on ZH, I get the sense that Lenovo is getting all the damage from this. Yes, Lenovo messed up by not doing their due diligence on Superfish. I bet Superfish and their Zionists got just the effect they wanted.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 19:09 | 5810090 L Bean
L Bean's picture

So somewhere, every person who's bought one of these Lenovos has their face linked to their online activity.

Just like Big Bother wanted but couldn't fully achieve w Facebook.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 20:19 | 5810309 unicorn
unicorn's picture

simple test to see, if youre infected:

http://www.heise.de/security/news/foren/S-Superfish-Online-Test/forum-29...

and yes, we want clean computers, that would be biggest startup this year...

maybe people who care, like producers of the fair phone, could also produce clean and fair computers...

the fair phones are allways sold out!

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 20:25 | 5810333 Chuck Knoblauch
Chuck Knoblauch's picture

Reading emails without a warrant is a crime.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 21:19 | 5810559 Luckhasit
Luckhasit's picture

Yes, we fucked it up by putting a third party in charge of collecting the data and keeping tabs on you. 

Next time, it will be us. Self note to others who try.

Fri, 02/20/2015 - 23:28 | 5810973 Navymugsy
Navymugsy's picture

We "Superfished" some folks...

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 00:46 | 5811210 MedicalQuack
MedicalQuack's picture

Ok let's go back in time a little, remember the SONY root kit?  This of course is more modern and worse as we all know the complexities with items of this sort get harder all the time to get rid of.  I have a Lenovo computer that's about 4 years old, a good one, same touch screen and large portable unit the weather service uses.  Four years ago, I reformatted the hard drive and got rid of the Lenovo junk then, and maybe I got rid of a root kit too at the time:)  I only downloaded a couple of drivers I needed and did a clean install.  That's what you do.

On this topic of getting "code hosed", yeah, why I made up the Killer Algorithms page of videos so folks can watch some people smarter than me explain how math models and code screws you.  Consumers don't have a chance.  I wish I could get more consumers over there instead of the banksters seeing what I'm up to for goodness sakes.  Yeah, they find the site too as well as the government agencies from time to time.  For some reason the international currencies agency really seems to keep coming back:) 

http://www.ducknet.net/attack-of-the-killer-algorithms/

I used to be a coder and developer and I saw this code hosing first hand with the old CA HMOs with doctors getting ripped all the time on their EOBs and I made up a little software program and gave it away to them to import their spreadsheets to find the "floating patients" that were there one month and gone the next with no changes in the policies.  HMOs used to give out bonuses to the administrators so there was reason to be suspicious, but I could never nail one down but ironic several IPAs had this issue?  This is why I'm such an activist on this stuff as I have been there and seen it with what I stated above and other places.  You can't win when the code is rigged. 

That's what drives all of us nuts who know how this works and we can't get a big enough consumer audience to listen to us.  Please do pay attention to me and others as damn we used to or still do write the stuff and know how you can write good code or sneaky proprietary code that does otherwise.  It's out there all over the place and how do you think banks did all their dirty work?  Compile it up and nobody ever gets to see the raw code...perfect for those who rip other off with code. Read Eric over at Nanex, same thing, he's a coder and that's the commonality we have in both fighting people getting code hosed. 

Now on privacy, I will have my day after 3 years of beating the drum on licensing data sellers and I may go completely broke doing this but we need to index and license all data sellers.  Shoot I have had tweets from both the Anonymous group and quants like Derman, jumping right in on this as again folks who do data and models "know" you need a frigging index so regulate anything.  Could you imagine a world where stock brokers self regulated?  LOL..not but the silly lawyers think this is possible...oh yeah..so let's write some more code up to rip everyone in this area now. 

http://www.youcaring.com/other/help-preserve-our-privacy-/258776

So again, companies like Lenovo, Sony and others pull the code over your eyes and please listen to folks that tell you the truth on this stuff.  It's not magic or Al, it's all a bunch of code and algorithms.  Bill Gates on software-it's nothing more than a bunch of algorithms working together...

If code can be written to rig it, they'll do it.  Again I just get so tired of seeing consumers and me too, getting ripped off as heck even I can't catch all of it but can certainly tune in to when the actions seem to show something fishy is going on.  If we don't start soon on licensing data sellers, well crap not only privacy but accuracy in data is going to be worse.  What do you think the Anthem hackers wanted?  They want to repackage and sell data too. 

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 04:12 | 5811396 Overdrawn
Overdrawn's picture

Anybody interested in buying an abucus?

Sun, 02/22/2015 - 04:17 | 5814417 rgraf
rgraf's picture

Remember the Dom Deluis commercial where he had an abacus? He was asked if he knew how to use it, and he said, "sure, ask me anything." They asked something, and he gave it a shake, and said " batteries are are dead."

Sat, 02/21/2015 - 08:24 | 5811563 overmedicatedun...
overmedicatedundersexed's picture

computer makers (compaq, ibm, hp, made money yrs ago on making them) when prices fell there is no profit in making them by by compaq..so for cheap computer makers :lenovo found another profit stream, data mining. too bad, but it's profit and business and .govs like it well too much.

I do not know if small computer builders can get around these worms in software and hardware, but that is where I would buy a computer from..they are not big enough to earn anything with these worms, and the big issue  there is the internet providers - comcast may they rot in hell, can't get around them.

NSA says smile you are always in view and yep every one of us is guilty, just for thinking we are free.

so don't do non .gov approved computing and you will be fine. get your mind right.

Sun, 02/22/2015 - 04:14 | 5814410 rgraf
rgraf's picture

That's not all they install. I was setting up a laptop at work, and during the initial OS install, there was a sound from the speakers that that was some sort of entrainment frequency. It only lasted for a second, but I found myself experiencing something like when you have trouble staying awake and keep nodding off. Kind of what narcolepsy must be. I have workedentrainment frequencies for awhile, but I have never experienced anything that co do this that fast. I wasn't tired at all when this hapeens, and the technology I am familiar with usualyy requires headphones. This happened right at the beginning of the install, so I don't think there was any audio drivers installed. It seems they must have piped it right to the audio hardware. It was a Lenovo x20 laptop.

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