What are Superfish?

Superfish and its certificate may be on PC

What are Superfish and why are they so dangerous?

Superfish is a piece of software that PC Retailers admitted to pre-installing on many of its laptops and PCs to "enhance the shopping experience" of its users. However, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team calls Superfish a "man-in-the-middle attack" because of how it "intercepts users' web traffic to provide targeted advertisements."

Superfish snoops in on your web browsing and secretly slips ads into webpages. But the really dangerous part is that it's pre-installed with root certificate authority, which allows it to impersonate any server's security certificate.

If this certificate is compromised by hackers, you could be tricked into logging in to a fake website and giving hackers your password. Because of Superfish, any of your accounts, including encrypted bank accounts, could be easily compromised.

Will restoring from a backup help?

Superfish is pre-installed by PC Retailer. Therefore, restoring your computer to factory condition from either a backup partition or a backup DVD will not solve the problem if Superfish is also part of your backup. Superfish would only be reinstalled, too. So if you ever use a backup to restore your system, you may need to again remove Superfish and its root security certificate from your system.

All Acer laptops and PCs have malware pre-loaded which must be removed before windows updates can install. According to Lenovo, Superfish may have been pre-installed on the following models:

E Series:         E10-30

G Series:         G410, G510, G710, G40-70, G50-70, G40-30, G50-30, G40-45, G50-45, G40-80

S Series:         S310, S410, S40-70, S415, S415Touch, S435, S20-30, S20-30Touch

U Series:         U330P, U430P, U330Touch, U430Touch, U530Touch

Y Series:         Y430P, Y40-70, Y50-70, Y40-80, Y70-70

Z Series:          Z40-75, Z50-75, Z40-70, Z50-70, Z70-80

Edge Series: Edge 15

Flex Series:     Flex2 14D, Flex2 15D, Flex2 14, Flex2 15, Flex2 Pro, Flex 10

 

MIIX Series: MIIX2-8, MIIX2-10, MIIX2-11, MIIX 3 1030

YOGA Series: YOGA2Pro-13, YOGA2-13, YOGA2-11, YOGA3 Pro

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