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Cannot see how this could possibly be true. Having been privy to OS bundling for products, I can assure you there is lengthy contracts, and negotiations, about

Cannot see how this could possibly be true. Having been privy to OS bundling for products, I can assure you there is lengthy contracts, and negotiations, about exactly what is happening. You do no simply walk up to Lenovo and have your "software" installed into the OS without a very detailed contract and pay structure. There also looks to be js injected into pages, which is serving up the ads, and a comment about Lenovo [1]. Think about what the means. There was a project at this company, where they had meetings, project plans, testing to make sure it worked, and a very detailed idea of what was going on. Never mind all the ramping up capacity due to new Lenovo's boxes coming on-line. There is zero chance this was some low level junior programmer fly by night operation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072542

kentonv 12y ago
Oh I'm sure they had lots of meetings about the contracts and pay structure, and they may have done testing to make sure it didn't break things, but apparently no one did a security review. Sadly, this doesn't surprise me that much. If they did know about the problem, they could have fixed it. If the app simply generated a new key as part of first-time use, then it would just be run-of-the-mill crapware rather than a gaping security hole. Even if Lenovo has malicious intent, it would still have been in their best interests to do at least that, yet they didn't. Hence I assume it was incompetence.
- moe 12y ago
  but apparently no one did a security review It doesn't take a "security review" to spot a gaping security and privacy violation like this. Any engineer with even the slightest clue of how a browser and "the internet" works would have called this out during the first "How does this product work?"-presentation. Let's not pretend Lenovo is staffed with monkeys.
  - e12e 12y ago
    “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” Remember stuff like this: http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70059600123/saltstack-rsa-e-d-1 http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70059600123/saltstack-rsa-e-... (Which, possibly unfairly, is one reason I'm leaning more towards ansible than saltstack to this day -- I mean, if stuff like that got through... what else, in more complex areas of the system?)
    - freehunter 12y ago
      The problem in Lenovo's situation is, calling it incompetence is the real stretch. You could call Charles Manson incompetent saying he just didn't know what he was doing was wrong, but everyone knows he was just evil. Never falsely attribute to incompetence what is actually ascribable to malice. You can't come in here with a straight face and say that no one at Lenovo considered the security risk of including this software. If it was considered and they pushed ahead with it anyway, that's malice.
      - e12e 12y ago
        I don't think anyone there thought/realized that they were including a backdoor usable by any number of third parties (by virtue of installing a mitm-cert, and giving away the key). And this case is much worse than any other crapware-by-way-of-oem than I've heard of. But given the amount of nasty stuff most vendors seem to install on systems -- it appears to me that no one really looks at what is installed, or gives much thought to the consequences. It's negligent, and in this case probably criminally so -- and that might constitute "an evil" -- but I don't think this is the result of someone's overt intentional evil act. I don't think anyone actually did consider the security risk of this particular piece of software. Maybe I'm naive, but if nothing else, the risk of lawsuits/backlash seems too great in this case. I don't like ads and bloatware, but I think calling them "evil" is diluting what "evil" means. I might be wrong, of course. But I don't think any of the big OEMs does any real review of the crap that is installed on computers -- and I think forgetting to generate an unique cert/key on post-install/first run is an error -- not intentional. Deciding to install this kind of crap strikes me as a very poor decision -- but I'm still not sure I'd consider it evil. Evil would be using the Intel management co-prosessor to do something similar -- presumably then a clean install wouldn't help.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    You're so optimistic it hurts "Any engineer" means something in HN, but we're not talking about "people who read HN" levels of engineer here, don't be mistaken. Some people that have had no or limited experience with software are assigned to software projects, and that's the issue with companies like Lenovo.
    - moe 12y ago
      Operations the size of Lenovo have a fairly intense vetting process before a product goes to market. I find it very hard to believe that no red flags were raised by any of the engineers, managers and especially lawyers who must have screened this "feature" for problems. It seems more plausible that the problem was known from the beginning (it is by design after all) and Lenovo decided to risk it.
      - RaleyField 12y ago
        > Operations the size of Lenovo have a fairly intense vetting process before a product goes to market. How does that go along with a gigantic fuckup like this? Ipso facto there was no vetting, otherwise this wouldn't happen. What did they expect, that this wouldn't come out, that this wouldn't damage their brand even further? If it was done out of malice it is still poorly vetted and incompetent malice.
        ptaipale 12y ago
        Just repeat, “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” They probably didn't figure out that anyone would have a problem with this. For them, it's just a cool gimmick to get some money. That it is a gaping security hole which makes about 0.42 % of user population mad, probably never occurred to them. Unfortunately, for the 0.42 % (that is us, reading this site, and people of similar interests) it will be hard going to explain to the next 4.2 % why this is so bad. The remaining approximately 96 % of population will stay largely uninterested.
        radioact1ve 12y ago
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    How many engineers do you think were in the "how it works" meeting?
BinaryIdiot 12y ago
I don't know, I've worked on some large government projects where things like this could have possibly slipped through because an engineer or two thought it was a clever way to workaround the issue. Granted they should have known and may have known but I'm not convinced they had to have known.

kentonv 12y ago

Oh I'm sure they had lots of meetings about the contracts and pay structure, and they may have done testing to make sure it didn't break things, but apparently no one did a security review. Sadly, this doesn't surprise me that much. If they did know about the problem, they could have fixed it. If the app simply generated a new key as part of first-time use, then it would just be run-of-the-mill crapware rather than a gaping security hole. Even if Lenovo has malicious intent, it would still have been in their best interests to do at least that, yet they didn't. Hence I assume it was incompetence.

moe 12y ago
but apparently no one did a security review It doesn't take a "security review" to spot a gaping security and privacy violation like this. Any engineer with even the slightest clue of how a browser and "the internet" works would have called this out during the first "How does this product work?"-presentation. Let's not pretend Lenovo is staffed with monkeys.
- e12e 12y ago
  “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” Remember stuff like this: http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70059600123/saltstack-rsa-e-d-1 http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70059600123/saltstack-rsa-e-... (Which, possibly unfairly, is one reason I'm leaning more towards ansible than saltstack to this day -- I mean, if stuff like that got through... what else, in more complex areas of the system?)
  - freehunter 12y ago
    The problem in Lenovo's situation is, calling it incompetence is the real stretch. You could call Charles Manson incompetent saying he just didn't know what he was doing was wrong, but everyone knows he was just evil. Never falsely attribute to incompetence what is actually ascribable to malice. You can't come in here with a straight face and say that no one at Lenovo considered the security risk of including this software. If it was considered and they pushed ahead with it anyway, that's malice.
    - e12e 12y ago
      I don't think anyone there thought/realized that they were including a backdoor usable by any number of third parties (by virtue of installing a mitm-cert, and giving away the key). And this case is much worse than any other crapware-by-way-of-oem than I've heard of. But given the amount of nasty stuff most vendors seem to install on systems -- it appears to me that no one really looks at what is installed, or gives much thought to the consequences. It's negligent, and in this case probably criminally so -- and that might constitute "an evil" -- but I don't think this is the result of someone's overt intentional evil act. I don't think anyone actually did consider the security risk of this particular piece of software. Maybe I'm naive, but if nothing else, the risk of lawsuits/backlash seems too great in this case. I don't like ads and bloatware, but I think calling them "evil" is diluting what "evil" means. I might be wrong, of course. But I don't think any of the big OEMs does any real review of the crap that is installed on computers -- and I think forgetting to generate an unique cert/key on post-install/first run is an error -- not intentional. Deciding to install this kind of crap strikes me as a very poor decision -- but I'm still not sure I'd consider it evil. Evil would be using the Intel management co-prosessor to do something similar -- presumably then a clean install wouldn't help.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  You're so optimistic it hurts "Any engineer" means something in HN, but we're not talking about "people who read HN" levels of engineer here, don't be mistaken. Some people that have had no or limited experience with software are assigned to software projects, and that's the issue with companies like Lenovo.
  - moe 12y ago
    Operations the size of Lenovo have a fairly intense vetting process before a product goes to market. I find it very hard to believe that no red flags were raised by any of the engineers, managers and especially lawyers who must have screened this "feature" for problems. It seems more plausible that the problem was known from the beginning (it is by design after all) and Lenovo decided to risk it.
    - RaleyField 12y ago
      > Operations the size of Lenovo have a fairly intense vetting process before a product goes to market. How does that go along with a gigantic fuckup like this? Ipso facto there was no vetting, otherwise this wouldn't happen. What did they expect, that this wouldn't come out, that this wouldn't damage their brand even further? If it was done out of malice it is still poorly vetted and incompetent malice.
      - ptaipale 12y ago
        Just repeat, “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” They probably didn't figure out that anyone would have a problem with this. For them, it's just a cool gimmick to get some money. That it is a gaping security hole which makes about 0.42 % of user population mad, probably never occurred to them. Unfortunately, for the 0.42 % (that is us, reading this site, and people of similar interests) it will be hard going to explain to the next 4.2 % why this is so bad. The remaining approximately 96 % of population will stay largely uninterested.
        radioact1ve 12y ago
- tedunangst 12y ago
  How many engineers do you think were in the "how it works" meeting?

BinaryIdiot 12y ago

I don't know, I've worked on some large government projects where things like this could have possibly slipped through because an engineer or two thought it was a clever way to workaround the issue. Granted they should have known and may have known but I'm not convinced they had to have known.