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I would have expected this to show up from many different sources. The fact that only one person is reporting this makes the story somewhat suspect. Surely he's

I would have expected this to show up from many different sources. The fact that only one person is reporting this makes the story somewhat suspect. Surely he's not the only Samsung owner to run a malware scan.

westbywest 16y ago
He mentioned the models of Samsung laptops that he had access to. Perhaps someone on this HN thread could verify?
pavel_lishin 16y ago
> Surely he's not the only Samsung owner to run a malware scan. On a machine he just bought, without installing anything else? Besides, someone has to be first.
- GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
  He noticed this back in February so I'd think that's a fairly long time to be the only report. A few other things bothered me about the article: the heavy handed reference to Sony's rootkit, as others noted, is inappropriate since the Sony rootkit was clearly a deliberate decision. In this case, the most we can say at this point in time is that he found a keylogger on a Samsung computer. Whether it was put there deliberately or not is unknown. Which leads to my further gripes with the headline (which flatly implies that it was deliberate), with the fact that he didn't retain the evidence but chose to write about it (which means noone can verify his findings), and with his apparent lack of curiousity about whether the keylogger was operational and where it might be sending its data.
  - capstone 16y ago
    On March 1, 2011, I called and logged incident 2101163379 with Samsung Support. ... The supervisor confirmed that Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
    - GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
      Ah. Missed that bit. Thanks.
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    Someone could verify it by buying a laptop and checking to see if the keylogger exists. Someone with more money to spend than me, anyway :P
    - iuytghyjuyh 16y ago
      If it is just a user testing program they would only put it on a random small percentage of machines - otherwise you would be swamped by the amount of data. You might also have biased data if you only put it on a particular model and a large number of them were bought be a single corporation or school district
JamieEi 16y ago
It seems much more likely that the AV exe that he is running is infected.

westbywest 16y ago

He mentioned the models of Samsung laptops that he had access to. Perhaps someone on this HN thread could verify?

pavel_lishin 16y ago

> Surely he's not the only Samsung owner to run a malware scan. On a machine he just bought, without installing anything else? Besides, someone has to be first.

GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
He noticed this back in February so I'd think that's a fairly long time to be the only report. A few other things bothered me about the article: the heavy handed reference to Sony's rootkit, as others noted, is inappropriate since the Sony rootkit was clearly a deliberate decision. In this case, the most we can say at this point in time is that he found a keylogger on a Samsung computer. Whether it was put there deliberately or not is unknown. Which leads to my further gripes with the headline (which flatly implies that it was deliberate), with the fact that he didn't retain the evidence but chose to write about it (which means noone can verify his findings), and with his apparent lack of curiousity about whether the keylogger was operational and where it might be sending its data.
- capstone 16y ago
  On March 1, 2011, I called and logged incident 2101163379 with Samsung Support. ... The supervisor confirmed that Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
  - GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
    Ah. Missed that bit. Thanks.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Someone could verify it by buying a laptop and checking to see if the keylogger exists. Someone with more money to spend than me, anyway :P
  - iuytghyjuyh 16y ago
    If it is just a user testing program they would only put it on a random small percentage of machines - otherwise you would be swamped by the amount of data. You might also have biased data if you only put it on a particular model and a large number of them were bought be a single corporation or school district

JamieEi 16y ago

It seems much more likely that the AV exe that he is running is infected.