Advertising Company Superfish Closes Doors After Storm Of Criticism

Advertising company Superfish, early this year in the center was a storm of criticism, the doors closed.Superfish delivered to Lenovo a program that intercepted on all kinds of laptop models SSL connections to inject ads.

The adware used for this purpose its own root certificate. Researchers managed to crack the password using the private key of the Superfish certificate. This makes it possible in some cases to perform man-in-the-middle attacks against systems running Superfish and the certificate installed. Because of the incident Lenovo Superfish decided not to deliver laptops and offered a tool to remove. In addition, there were all kinds of lawsuits.

Co-founder Adi Pinhas has now decided to close Superfish and the company's technology through a new company, Visual Just to be used. Instead of injecting ads Visual works Just to smartphone apps that can recognize pictures and can search for similar images, without any text labels are required. According Pinhas was the move to this "visual search software" is already underway, but which was accelerated by all the criticism that erupted after the vulnerability.

That's not to say Just Visual nothing to do with the ads will have. The visual search engine is in fact focused on the search for specific objects by telephone. The search engine can then show ads of similar products. In addition, the company hopes to make money on licenses for the use of technology. Well Just Visual will follow industry standards for safety and privacy, as late as Chief Product Officer Keven Lee opposite the Associated Press know.

Google Warns SSL Kapende Adware

Adware is not only annoying because it shows everywhere ads, it also poses a serious security risk.Before warns Google. The Internet giant is facing various forms of adware that are able to hijack SSL connections, such as with Superfish Lenovo was the case.

The adware runs through hijacking SSL connections actually a man-in-the-middle attack from users, allowing access to personal information can be obtained and the computer is vulnerable. In the case of Superfish and Komodia attackers could for example host phishing sites that caused no warning and decrypt encrypted traffic.

To avoid this kind of risk Google advises users to be careful when downloading software from the Internet. When a secure site visited, for example online banking, extra attention should be given to strange changes to the website, such as additional ads, coupons or investigations. "This may be an indication that your computer with this kind of unwanted software is infected," says Google software engineer Eric Severance.