Lenovo releases set of tools to remove controversial Superfish adware from laptops

New Delhi: Lenovo has released a set of tools to remove the controversial 'Superfish' adware from its laptops which compromised the computer's encryption certificates to quietly include more ads on Google search.

It was revealed earlier this week that Lenovo had been pre-installing the program onto many of its Windows PCs for months and researchers found out the many vulnerabilities that the adware carried by putting the users' computers at risk.

A Tech Crunch report stated that the computer maker has released a set of automated tools that the company has said will ensure complete removal of Superfish and Certificates for all major browsers.

Although the company had turned off everything Superfish-related on the server side in January, however, it did not solve the problem of security flaws in the laptops.

In its latest attempt at issuing a patch, Lenovo has also published the removal tool's source code for scrutiny, and for those who would like to compile the tool themselves, along with a step-by-step procedure to remove the adware manually.

Lenovo said in its statement, "we ordered Superfish pre-loads to stop and had server connections shut down in January based on user complaints about the experience. However, we did not know about this potential security vulnerability until yesterday. We recognize that this was our miss, and we will do better in the future. Now we are focused on fixing it.

Since that time we have moved as swiftly and decisively as we can based on what we now know. While this issue in no way impacts our ThinkPads; any tablets, desktops or smartphones; or any enterprise server or storage device, we recognize that all Lenovo customers need to be informed. We apologize for causing these concerns among our users for any reason - and we are learning from experience and improve what we do and how we do it. We will continue to take steps to make removal of the software and underlying vulnerable certificates in question easy for customers so they can continue to use our products with the confidence that they expect and deserve."