Lenovo’s Superfish incident is not a small accident—it is a huge hit to the tech giant’s name. Lenovo acknowledged and owned up that the malware infection in its pre-installed software was an accident and took immediate measures to rectify the problem. The tech giant pre-installs a few software applications on its desktop computers and laptops and one of the software was infected by the Superfish malware. The malware indirectly opens a backdoor to hackers, which is a huge security concern.
According to a report on The Register, a Californian woman, Jessica Bennet, who faced the wrath of the Superfish malware on her Lenovo, has filed a class-action law suit on Lenovo over the episode. According to the suit, she was writing a blog post for a client’s website and saw ‘raunchy’ ads popping up on her screen. While she immediately thought that the website was hacked, she informed the client about the compromise. However, while she was browsing through some other websites, she saw the same set of ads in her browser, which featured nude images and sorts, she confirmed that she was attacked by a malware.
The reported further stated that Jessica then logged on to the Lenovo customer support forums only to find out that a user had already posted a similar episode, blaming the issue on Superfish, a malware that is the main reason for the explicit ads. However, Lenovo denied that they had anything to do with the malware on their systems. The user on the forum also claimed speaking to the online support team, but they insisted for a one-time fee of $120 for removal of the malware and also advised a monthly software support subscription.
A month later, Lenovo confessed bundling the Superfish malware with its systems. This admission will cost Lenovo dearly. As of now, Jessica is the only one filing a suit against Lenovo, but her demand is that Lenovo should pay the affected citizens around $10,000 each. If true, Lenovo could see a huge outward payment of more than $5 million.
