Just a few days ago, reports of Lenovo's adware installation created quite a buzz among customers. The adware, called Superfish, has reportedly been detected in numerous models of Lenovo Laptops and is responsible for infusing third-party ads on Google search and websites.
The Superfish adware news went viral and Department of Homeland, US Government has now urged Lenovo Group to remove the adware.
According to the department, the adware makes the affected systems vulnerable to cyber attacks like SSL Spoofing. The SSL Spoofing allows the attackers to decrypt and read web traffic, redirect traffic to spoofed sites and perform other attacks.
In defence, Lenovo has issued statements and instructions regarding the removal of the vulnerable adware. If you own a Lenovo laptop, read the step-by-step instruction below to remove the adware from your system.
Determine if you have the SuperFish Certificate installed and how to Remove
- On Windows 8.1 open search.
- Search for "Certificate". Select "Manage computer certificates"
- When prompted by Windows, "Do you want to allow this program to make changes to this computer?", select 'Yes'
- The certificate manager window should appear. On the left hand panel, select "Trusted Root Certificate Authorities" followed by the sub-folder "Certificates". On the right panel, find the item with the name "Superfish, Inc.".
- If you do not find an item with the name "SuperFish Inc.", the certificate is not in the Windows store. You may still need to remove it from Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird if you have them installed.
- Right click on the item labeled "Superfish, Inc." and select 'Delete'. On touch systems, you may select the red 'X' in top toolbar.
- When prompted by Windows to confirm the deletion, select 'Yes'. The certificate should now be removed.
- Restart your device
Manual Removal Process
- On Windows 8.1 open search.
- In the search box write "Remove Programs" then select "Add or Remove Programs"
- In the list of installed items, locate "Superfish Inc. Visual Discovery".
- Select "Uninstall". The uninstall will take several seconds. When the uninstall completes, it will automatically be removed from the list of installed programs.
- After uninstalling the SuperFish application, the certificate may still remain. It is very important to delete the certificate even though the application itself has been removed.
Note:
If you do not find an item with the name "Superfish Inc. VisualDiscovery", you do not have the application installed.
