14 DAY TRIAL // The Superfish saga that started last month and that revealed that Lenovo sold computers infected with adware between September 2014 and February 2015 is almost over, so Microsoft, which is actually one of the companies that helped clean the PCs, can now provide some statistics on how bad the Chinese manufacturer's blunder affected us.
Microsoft updated Windows Defender with virus definitions that could detect and remove Superfish from all computers on February 19, and since then, hundreds of thousands of computers have been cleaned.
While exact figures are not yet available, a graph provided by Microsoft itself proves that nearly 300,000 computers were infected with Superfish, but thanks to updates that were rapidly delivered to Windows Defender and third-party antivirus solutions in late February, the number of compromised PCs has dropped significantly until now.
Microsoft partners also helped clean Superfish
Microsoft's blog post, which also includes some technical details for the tech-savvy ones, reveals that the company worked together with partners to clean computers as fast as possible. What the software giant did't say, however, is that the Superfish saga indirectly affected Microsoft too, as customers no longer felt secure on Windows, no matter the version of the OS or the manufacturer of their device.
"In January 2015, Lenovo responded by disabling Superfish advertising and ordering a stop to the Superfish preloading. On February 19, it became evident that the framework Superfish relied upon for its ad-injection was compromising the fundamental trust model of affected systems, rendering users vulnerable to MiTM attacks," Microsoft explained.
Windows Defender comes pre-installed on modern versions of Windows, so if your computer is connected to the Internet, the virus definitions that can help detect and clean Superfish should already be there, so simply scanning your computer should be enough to make sure that the adware isn't running on your system too.
On the other hand, if you're running a different version of Windows, Lenovo has also published its very own SuperFish Removal tool that helps clean the infection without the need for a third-party antivirus solution.
