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> This raises an interesting paradox to me. How would the people writing the marketing copy for any product that was supposedly Superfish-resilient actually kno

> This raises an interesting paradox to me. How would the people writing the marketing copy for any product that was supposedly Superfish-resilient actually know that it was? A big difference is that Dell's inclusion of the private key appears to be a (major) screwup by someone with technical responsibility[0], whereas Superfish was downright intentional and involved people all over the company. In that light, this doesn't really appear to be a paradox - no company should ever market themselves as being immune to mistakes and/or breaches. But it's pretty straightforward to live up to promises that you won't intentionally compromise all security whatsoever just to make a few ad dollars (which is what Lenovo did). [0] As far as I can tell, there's no evidence that Dell benefits in any way from shipping the private key, so I'm going to invoke Hanlon's razor until we discover otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

cm2187 11y ago
But it would be a screw up in Dell's core activity. It's like Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. I would be surprised if this didn't get approved by many people before going ahead.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > But it would be a screw up in Dell's core activity. It's like Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. It's like Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. I'm not really sure I'd say that this is comparable to Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. But either way, there's a big difference between "we made a serious technical error, and nobody at the company caught this" and "we intentionally compromised our entire product because advertisers were willing to pay us, and nobody at the company stopped this".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- yohui 11y ago
  At least on the consumer end, I'd say Dell's "core activity" is hardware, not software. This is more like Intel selling software that can screw up your computer: https://www.mcafee.com/ https://www.mcafee.com/
  - cm2187 11y ago
    Hardware and the drivers associated.
- lmm 11y ago
  Many hardware companies regard software as an afterthought, not a core activity; it's often outsourced.

cm2187 11y ago

But it would be a screw up in Dell's core activity. It's like Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. I would be surprised if this didn't get approved by many people before going ahead.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> But it would be a screw up in Dell's core activity. It's like Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. It's like Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. I'm not really sure I'd say that this is comparable to Intel screwing up the design of the Xeon. But either way, there's a big difference between "we made a serious technical error, and nobody at the company caught this" and "we intentionally compromised our entire product because advertisers were willing to pay us, and nobody at the company stopped this".
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
yohui 11y ago
At least on the consumer end, I'd say Dell's "core activity" is hardware, not software. This is more like Intel selling software that can screw up your computer: https://www.mcafee.com/ https://www.mcafee.com/
- cm2187 11y ago
  Hardware and the drivers associated.
lmm 11y ago
Many hardware companies regard software as an afterthought, not a core activity; it's often outsourced.