For one week in February of 2015, the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week. Lenovo's customers discovered that the company had been selling computers with pre-installed adware based software from a company called Superfish. Security researchers discovered that Superfish was not just annoying, but opened up the customers to significant vulnerabilities. Lizard Squad, a hacker group, retaliated by hijacking the lenovo.com domain name and redirecting traffic to their own propaganda site. This case study will investigate Superfish, how it works, why it was used, how dangerous it can be, and the players who developed it. But first, this paper will explore the Lenovo domain hacks, how they work, and who was behind it.
