Adware:W32/Superfish is a program pre-installed on some Lenovo consumer laptop models that surreptitiously inserts advertisements into webpages by either injecting JavaScript into non-encrypted web traffic or, for encrypted traffic, by using a self-signed root certificate that misrepresents itself as the official certificate of the website being viewed.
Once detected, the F-Secure security product will automatically remove the Superfish VisualDiscovery application from the system and the affected Superfish certificate from the Windows Certificate Store.
Take note that F-Secure products will not remove the Superfish certificate from Mozilla products. To do so, follow the instructions provided by Lenovo at:
A False Positive is when a file is incorrectly detected as harmful, usually because its code or behavior resembles known harmful programs. A False Positive will usually be fixed in a subsequent database update without any action needed on your part. If you wish, you may also:
Check for the latest database updates
First check if your F-Secure security program is using the latest updates, then try scanning the file again.
Submit a sample
After checking, if you still believe the file is incorrectly detected, you can submit a sample of it for re-analysis.
Note: If the file was moved to quarantine, you need to collect the file from quarantine before you can submit it.
Exclude a file from further scanning
If you are certain that the file is safe and want to continue using it, you can exclude it from further scanning by the F-Secure security product.
Note: You need administrative rights to change the settings.
Adware:W32/Superfish is a program pre-installed on some Lenovo consumer laptop models that surreptitiously inserts advertisements into webpages viewed by the user. According to a comment from Lenovo, the advertising content is determined based on analysis of images displayed during browsing, in order to display similar products.
The Superfish program has raised questions among privacy advocates over the silent interception and injection of content via JavaScript into non-encrypted web traffic. Of more concern is its ability to intercept and inject content into encrypted traffic, in what is known as a 'man-in-the-middle' attack. To do so, Superfish uses a self-signed root certificate that misrepresents itself as the official certificate of a HTTPS website visited by the user; this then allows the program to insert its own content into the website content being displayed to the user.
For more information, see: