Lenovo Hit With Lawsuit Over Superfish Adware 114
An anonymous reader writes with news that the fallout from the Superfish fiasco might just be starting for Lenovo. "Lenovo admitted to pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs, and unhappy customers are now dragging the company to court on the matter. A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges both companies with 'fraudulent' business practices and of making Lenovo PCs vulnerable to malware and malicious attacks by pre-loading the adware. Plaintiff Jessica Bennett said her laptop was damaged as a result of Superfish, which was called 'spyware' in court documents. She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits."
good (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope it costs both of them twice what they earned
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More likely it'll cost the plaintiff twice of what she earns in her lifetime.
Lenovo is a rich company and the court is in the US; she doesn't stand a chance of winning.
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Class Action. Assuming Miss Bennett isn't a lawyer herself, a firm will take the case. And just like in the NVidia lawsuit, will take 90% of the profit and give lenovo customers a 5 dollar off coupon for their next purchase.
Read the EULA... the lawsuit has no merit. (Score:3, Funny)
The EULA that is part of clicking through to use the PC states Superfish's conditions.
This lawsuit will be tossed out before it ever hits a court of law, just because EULAs have a legal precedent of being incredibly enforceable.
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Re: Read the EULA... the lawsuit has no merit. (Score:3, Insightful)
The lawsuit alleges fraudulent business practices - i.e., that the plaintiff was lied to. If the eula contains lies, then reading the eula would not do any good.
Re:Read the EULA... the lawsuit has no merit. (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue isn't whether EULAs are *potentially* enforceable. The question is whether *this* EULA is enforceable.
In general there is no contract unless their is some kind of exchange of "considerations". Typically the consideration is the privilege of using the copyright holder's software. But, if you can show that users don't want to use this software, and that it is installed for the benefit of a third party, there is no exchange of considerations between the end-user and the copyright holder, and therefore no valid contract.
Re:Read the EULA... the lawsuit has no merit. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not so cut and dry though. This has gone through the courts multiple times and EULA have been enforced and not enforced multiple times. It seems to depend on more of which court you take it to. Now the issue here isn't only things that would be covered by the EULA. If it were this would be mildly interesting, the meat of it is the fact that they also are talking about leaving computers/users open for attack and damaging the equipment and hurting people(not physically obviously). It's really interesting, and I wonder if a company can be held liable for poorly written software like that. If they can be held liable who's responsible? Lenovo for probably taking some money to put this on their computer or komodia for having shitty security and poor design.
If this goes for the people filing I wonder if it will have a positive affect and make manufacturers think before they do something like this in the future.
Does anyone recall what happened with the Sony Rootkit deal?
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There's also the gross negligence displayed by both Lenovo and Superfish in deploying this software. The fact that Lenovo specifically requested to not intercept HTTPS (documented in a JS comment) demonstrates that they were not as clueless about what Superfish has been doing as they want to let on.
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Is the US the only place where this happened? (OK, so *this* case is in the US, that doesn't mean there won't be others.)
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EULA that says what exactly?
"You agree by using this computer, that you paid good money for, to be spied upon and to have your computer cracked into and taken control of for possibly illegal activities. Agree? Yes/No".
Like that you mean? Did it say stuff like that? Did it ask the user to agree to being spied on and having their computer broken into by crackers?
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A EULA does not serve to make illegal things legal. EULAs are not laws.
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Not necessarily.
Contracts do not shield parties from criminal liability resulting from recklessness (knowingly, and willingly placing someone at risk) or negligence (unknowingly, but unnecessarily placing someone at risk).
One might argue that installing a root certificate on customer computers, including the private key on that same computer, and using an easily guessed password to protect that key constitutes negligent behaviour by placing customers at risk cyber attacks. It may even be argued that such an
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:4, Insightful)
how about the security flaws in the spyware? if it's a "BFD" go ahead and install it on you own system.
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small operation businesses often source cots equipment, and cant afford a dedicated IT dept to produce and maintain system images.
this means they get crapware in a business seting.
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Large organizations will pay more to get "business" laptops that in theory won't have this sort of crapware preinstalled. Large enough organizations may have a customized order contract which precisely specifies what software (if any besides the OS) is there.
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Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a feeling this is less about recovering from damages and more about teaching them a formal lesson (well, cashing-in under the guise of teaching them a formal lesson).
That's the entire point of a class action suit. To stop powerful companies from doing a large number of small harms and getting away with it.
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Hasn't worked too well, has it? Class action is a trivial business expense compared to what is gained. What should happen is a revocation of the corporate charter, and all revenues and properties seized a la *civil forfeiture*.
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I have a feeling this is less about recovering from damages and more about teaching them a formal lesson (well, cashing-in under the guise of teaching them a formal lesson).
That's the entire point of a class action suit. To stop powerful companies from doing a large number of small harms and getting away with it.
Ironically, awarding damages on an individual basis to the claimants would be far more punitive than whatever damages are awarded.
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They might have gone to Harvard, but they looked at this cheesy ad for 'The International Technical Institute', signed up for that program and now can only get a job writing Java widgets for dental clinic systems.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
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The reason for the lawsuit is so that, the next time Lenovo or any other computer maker is deciding whether to include some adware or browser hijacker with their Windows OS install, they decide against doing so because of legal liability.
Companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. Computer makers will not stop putting crapware on computers until it costs more for them to add the crapware (via lawsuit settlements, etc.) than they get in kickbacks from the crapware makers.
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it's a BFD, Lenovo took money to install an application that deliberately reduced end user security for the sake of inserting ads into their browsing activities! Not only is it completely bereft of ethics and respect for their customers, it's actively dangerous.
They shouldn't just be hit via a class action suit (assuming Lenovo isn't sticking a "binding arbitration" clause to defeat the ability for consumers to seek recourse) but Federal prosecution under one of the many computer security laws that would string up anyone else.
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Agreed. The only way to hold them responsible is to hurt them financially.
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Well they will either follow the law or be forced out of the market.
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:5, Interesting)
That’s simple assuming anyone in the US actually gives enough of a damn. If fines are levied on Lenovo as a result of this lawsuit, US Customs would be within their power to seize any Lenovo merchandise shipped to the US at the border until all fines are paid in full.
That’s a pretty good whack in the bottom line for any company, regardless of the nation in which they’re located. As long as they expect to sell their widgets to people physically located in the United States, US law can trivially be applied to them in such a way that they would need to comply before they may continue to operate profitably.
Whether this suit will be successful of course is a completely different story, but there’s no problem enforcing any judgement which may emerge from it.
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They shouldn't just be hit via a class action suit (assuming Lenovo isn't sticking a "binding arbitration" clause to defeat the ability for consumers to seek recourse) but Federal prosecution under one of the many computer security laws that would string up anyone else.
Honest question: is putting a backdoor/vulnerability into a product actually a crime in the US? As I understand it, most of the computer security laws are about actively breaking in ("gaining access"). The closest I can think of are contractual issues with sale ("fitness for purpose") and negligence, but both of those are civil.
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>This leaves us unscrupulous lawyers, who'll get all the money
Lawyers are like mercenaries. They get hired by people to do things that the people can't do themselves. Lawyers on their own do nothing, and have no motive aside from getting hired. The lawyers aren't the problem, it is the people asking the lawyers to act.
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Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The loss of time and effort to figure out whether this is going to cause a problem and then the time and effort to get rid of it.
That loss is obvious not much on a dollar per user basis, but if you add up all those users it's enough to incent Lenovo to do something so scurrilous. That's precisely the situation which class action lawsuits exist to redress, and according to the article that's the kind of lawsuit that has been filed.
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What about various chrome extensions that have superfish embeded inside them?
A while ago, flash video downloader was one, not sure if it still there... http://download.cnet.com/FVD-D... [cnet.com]
Google, do a better job, terminate all accounts to anyone using superfish.
CNET are fuckwits too, stop serving malware, they should be raided by the FBI now.
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not usually one to celebrate lawsuits. And you're right, there's not a lot of individual damage per computer. Rather, I'm perfectly fine with a modest payout per users that punishes Lenovo for this, both monetarily and with bad press. This sort of behavior absolutely has to stop, and I'm willing to enrich a few lawyers to make it happen. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good, I suppose.
Maybe this will wake people up to the fact that we seriously need some stronger consumer privacy laws. I'm also typically one who prefers to let markets manage themselves until it's clear that government actually needs to step in. I'm afraid we're at that point, because it's abundantly clear that too many companies are willing to go to just about any lengths to extract personal data from people in unscrupulous ways (as well as the government itself, ironically, but we'll tackle that issue separately).
So, yeah, it is actually a BFD. In fact, not every business customer uses their own system image - especially smaller business. And just because a personal user chooses specific services like Google whom they may trust, it does not give another company the right to make those decisions on their behalf. Many of those customers may well have chosen to avoid such services for that very reason. That choice was taken away from them, and instead, the computer they paid for was made less secure by that adware which was forced on them unknowingly. Fine, it's a first world problem, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.
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My employer is not a fortune 500 company and we just got a notice from IT that none of the corporate Lenovo laptops are affected and only consumer laptops are affected. This is most likely due to the fact that corporate laptops tend to not have all the usual consumer bloatware installed.
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His point was that not all businesses use business based laptops.
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My employer is not a fortune 500 company and we just got a notice from IT that none of the corporate Lenovo laptops are affected and only consumer laptops are affected. This is most likely due to the fact that corporate laptops tend to not have all the usual consumer bloatware installed.
But those models also get an actual pricetag for windows pro and if you buy in volume(20+) through a retailer you can get them OS-free. Dell sells linux laptops though the backdoors, and all of the large vendors will charge seperately for windows proffessional and deliver them with stock microsoft settings and not do the bundling discount they do for consumer laptop, but you pay more for those systems, then similar specced consumer laptops.
The core problem is that we dont consider discount through bundl
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I fail to see what kind of financial loss Lenovo customers might have incurred over this incident to warrant a class action suit.
Even if the class action suit only wins one penny, it will be worth it. Having a verdict on this issue can set a legal precedent (especially since Lenovo is probably not interested in defending the case too hard either).
For instance, it could pave the way for more easily winning a class action against Verizon. Verizon's case is a bit different, especially now that they're supposedly giving their customers the option to opt-out, but with a little bit of luck, a quick verdict on the Lenovo case could make Verizon reconsider its ongoing super-cookie/man-in-the-middle attack strategy against its own customers.
Re:Lawyers rejoice!! (Score:4)
If it isn't a big deal, does that mean you will import my certificate authority public key as fully trusted into your computer and point your DNS client to my servers?
No?
Well now you might see why it is a big deal after all.
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Because (most) bloatware doesn't spy on you or perform MITM attacks on your (supposedly secure) web browsing.
Maybe this will spell and end to this bundling horseshit, or at least make them VERY leery of what they choose to pollute new systems with. If they lose enough...
Re:How's this any different... (Score:5, Informative)
Even if the actual behavior of the bloatware were downright saintly(which is not the case) it was so incompetently constructed as to be indistinguishable from malice.
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This fine bloatware didn't merely act as an MiTM, it do so so incompetently that it exposed the user to basically any MiTM attack on an SSL connection(the root cert it used to sign bogus certificates was identical across every installation and effectively unprotected and the MiTM component would re-sign any cert handed to it, even an invalid one, opening the user to downright trivial MiTM attacks.
Many "enterprise" (lol) class proxies (deployed by corporations to "protect" their internal networks") do the exact same thing.
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Their network, their rules. A company doing this sort of thing on their own hardware, which is there for employee work purposes, is not comparable to Lenovo shipping millions of consumer units with this stuff surreptitiously installed.
Re:How's this any different... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many "enterprise" (lol) class proxies (deployed by corporations to "protect" their internal networks") do the exact same thing.
Totally different:
1. In a proxy, the key used to sign MITM traffic is on a device not accessible to anyone but the admins, not stored on a PC (probably improperly secured) that other malware could access.
2. A good proxy will check certs on the server side of the connection. The one we use will either "pass through" certificate errors, or allow us to block sites with invalid certs entirely.
3. A proper setup will use the URL categorization to not MITM certain traffic. We decrypt anything that's blocked (you have to in order to deliver a block page without cert errors), but that's not a big deal since it never even talks to the server. We also don't decrypt healthcare, banking, shopping, etc.
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Seeding hardware with malware and then selling it? Not so much. Yeah, maybe there is some nonsense clickwrap EULA; but there is no real consent of any kind, or even a proper warning.
If only for your own s
Seems pointless to sue (Score:3)
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Option D is the same as Option A. You let them get away with whatever and try to deal with the damage done.
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Well, with that attitude nothing will ever get accomplished.
That's not true. I didn't say don't do anything, I just said the lawsuit seems pointless. The payout from the lawsuit could be effectively zero for the consumer. They could find more useful ways to exert pressure on the company than this (and when one considers that Lenovo is Chinese, which severely reduces the likelihood of getting a verdict against them enforced).
All that the class action suit would do is line the pockets of some opportunistic attorneys (who get paid regardless of the outcome).
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Is your point to get a million dollars out of them, or is it to discourage them from doing this to you again?
If you want a million bucks out of them, you could win. Maybe. On February 30th.
If you want the company to be "corrected" or simply punished, then hit them with the class action suit.
The victory in the class action suit is that you punished them, and you did, by getting more money out of them than you ever would have alone. The fact that it benefits lawyers is irrelevant. You paid nothing to get
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I assume that this would be like buying a useless windows license, and there would be no point to sue.
Lenovo did something very very bad. It put users privacy a
Is this the right way? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Common misconception about class action suits (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's only true for the class members at large, if at all, because they typically refuse to pay any attention to the class litigation and/or court approval of the settlement. If you think that a settlement is only enriching the class lawyers -- OBJECT TO IT. [arstechnica.com]
It's a common refrain, yet almost nobody attempts to fil
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No criminal charges are necessary. A simple revocation of their charter and seizure of assets will have the desired effect. The problem is that business owns the government so basically nothing will happen until the voters wake up.
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Why not both? It's not like losing a civil complaint would absolve Lenovo of criminal liability. A lawsuit is the only option available to the consumer.
Re:Is this the right way? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not both? AFAIK there is no double-jeopardy protection between civil and criminal cases.
Sure, the lawyers could get rich on a class action settlement but you never know, the class could get something useful out of this. I don't know what's involved in removing this spyware, but you could potentially argue for something like 4 hours of skilled time per system just to clean it as a rough median (maybe much less for brand new systems, maybe much more for systems that would need to be wiped, re-setup and have apps and data put back on). And that doesn't include any claims for damages resulting from the infection itself, just remediation. Even if Lenovo bargained that down to half, in theory they could be on the hook for $200 per machine.
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I'd be happy if the judgement required mandatory inclusion of vanilla OS install media.
I install Linux but whenever I want to help family I'd love to start from a certified MS DVD.
FBI, sic em! (Score:2)
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Who cares who benefits financially? By punishing Lenovo's ILLEGAL behavior and driving them from the marketplace, society benefits. If we have to send an army of lawyers as mercs for hire to get them to do what federal prosecutors should be doing, so be it.
What? Wait. Grow some perspective.
Lenovo accepted remuneration in return for installing a program that injects ads and presumably reports statistics. How is that logically different from installing the Google Toolbar on IE? Right. It isn't.
Oh, but the software is poorly implemented and could allow unexpected access to the users' data. How is that logically different from installing Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader, each of which has repeatedly been found to massive security vulnerabilities? Right.
Next on the docket... (Score:2)
She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits.
Is she going to sue her ISP for doing the same thing?
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HTF does a website (a la Facebook) perform MITM on a browser?
It doesn't. That's not what was being said. The original post stated, "invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits." That is definitely something websites do.
Lenovo is NOT IBM for sure (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it should be clear to everyone now. Lenovo is not IBM and it may have managed to retain some of the reputation of the IBM branding that went with its computers. But with one mistake it has managed to wipe that all away with SuperFish. I learned my lesson a couple years ago that Lenovo was not IBM and it would never be anything close. I would not buy another Lenovo PC if they sold them for a dollar. I hope Lenovo pays dearly for this mistake, and I hope other PC makers see this as a lesson to not sell out its customers to some two bit crapware company to earn a few bucks.
It was a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the sort of crap everyone was predicting when IBM sold their PC line to Lenovo.
The only thing that surprises me is that it took so long.
Obligatory Car Analogy (Score:1)
When you go to buy a car, Superfish hires a team of gnomes to destroy the original documents, such as fliers or the title to your car, and replace it with their own documents with their ads included. If they were signed documents, then they forge the signatures as well.
Huge Ramifications to All Companies (Score:3, Interesting)
I expect Lenovo will get a lot of support from corporations like Samsung in this class action suit because of the ramifications the outcome of the case has for the other corporations.
Ubuntu on Lenovo Models .. (Score:2)
Tin Foil Hat Time (Score:4, Insightful)
The slideware published on government attempts to undermine SSL web traffic suggests they are supremely interested in trying anything they can.
Getting a trusted cert with a key they control installed on a large number of laptops is a dream come true.
So who is actually behind Komodo?
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Yes. Now where's that button to edit my slashdot post?
The last sentence was interesting.... (Score:3)
"She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits".
To me, this was more interesting than all the rest. It has the potential to break the big telcos, cable companies, Google, and anyone else who makes a living by tracking your browsing habits to server you "targeted advertising".
Reputational damage (Score:2)
This is why these kinds of thing never go to trial, and why the company always makes sure they never admit guilt. When they settle to "put it behind" themselves, it's like a cat burying it's shit. They can pretend that it never happened in the first place.
As
This is greed, not a mistake or carelessness. (Score:1)
I like ThinkPads, they offer a good quality and a clean design and they run well with GNU/Linux. So I'm okay really okay with Lenovo, but in this case I hope the class-actions succeeds.
This is not a mistake or carelessness, which could happen. Just fix it and everybody is glad.
This is greed. The spyed on there own customers to sell advertisments (with the purpose to get even more of your money) and sacrified (the technical reason doesn't matter) the security of the customers. This is not okay.
So I hope Leno
buy a lenovo now? (Score:2)
Can I buy a superfish loaded Lenovo laptop now, then join a lawsuit?