Lenovo website hacked; Lizard Squad claims responsibility

China's Lenovo Group Ltd website was hacked, the company said on Wednesday, days after the U.S. government advised Lenovo customers to remove a pre-installed virus-like software, "Superfish", on laptops that makes the devices more vulnerable to attacks.

Hacking group Lizard Squad claimed to be behind the attacks, according to its Twitter page.

Lizard Squad has taken credit for several high-profile outages, including attacks that took down Sony Corp's PlayStation Network and Microsoft Corp's Xbox Live network last month. Members of the group have not been identified.

"The domain name service server hosting Lenovo's website was hacked. We do not have any further information at this time to share. We'll update as soon as possible," Lenovo said in a statement to Reuters.

San Francisco-based security firm CloudFlare said hackers transferred the domain to CloudFlare in order to point it to a defacement site.

"As soon as we at CloudFlare noticed, we seized the account and worked with Lenovo to restore service while they worked to recover their domain," Marc Rogers, Principal Security Researcher at CloudFlare, said in an email to Reuters.

Starting 4 p.m. ET (2100 GMT) on Wednesday, visitors to the Lenovo website saw a slideshow of young people looking into webcams and the song "Breaking Free" playing in the background, according to The Verge, which first reported the breach.

"We're breaking free! Soarin', flyin', there's not a star in heaven that we can't reach!," Lizard Squad posted on its Twitter page, quoting the song from the movie "High School Musical".





The hackers also posted a couple of screenshots of an email between Lenovo employees regarding the "Superfish" software.



The Department of Homeland Security said in an alert on Friday that the "Superfish" program makes users vulnerable to a type of cyberattack known as SSL spoofing, in which remote attackers can read encrypted web traffic, redirect traffic from official websites to spoofs, and perform other attacks.

Rogers also said CloudFlare was able to restore service before Lenovo recovered the domain, suggesting that the outage was probably "quite small".

However, Lenovo's website was inaccessible at 7:54 p.m. ET (0054 GMT). A message said the site was unavailable due to system maintenance.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Lenovo laptop users urged to remove Superfish program

BOSTON - The U.S. government on Friday advised Lenovo Group Ltd customers to remove a "Superfish," a program pre-installed on some Lenovo laptops, saying it makes users vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an alert that the program makes users vulnerable to a type of cyberattack known as SSL spoofing, in which remote attackers can read encrypted web traffic, redirect traffic from official websites to spoofs, and perform other attacks.

"Systems that came with the software already installed will continue to be vulnerable until corrective actions have been taken," the agency said.

Adi Pinhas, chief executive of Palo Alto, California-based Superfish, said in a statement that his company's software helps users achieve more relevant search results based on images of products viewed. He said the vulnerability was "inadvertently" introduced by Israel-based Komodia, which built the application described in the government notice.

Komodia CEO arak Weichselbaum declined comment on the vulnerability.

Komodia's website says it produces a "hijacker" that allows users to view data encrypted with SSL technology.

"The hijacker uses Komodia's redirector platform to allow you easy access to the data and the ability to modify, redirect, block, and record the data without triggering the target browser's certification warning," according to the site.

Marc Rogers, a researcher with CloudFlare, said that means companies which deploy Komodia technology can snoop on web traffic.

"These guys can do everything from just collect a little bit of marketing information, all the way to building a profile on you and spying on your banking connections," he said. "It's a very dangerous slope."

Rogers said that use of Komodia's technology in other products makes them vulnerable to the same types of attacks as Lenovo's Superfish.

He said other vulnerable products include two parental filters: One from Komodia known as KeepMyFamilySecure and another from Qustodio.

Komodia's Weichselbaum said his company was investigating reports of vulnerabilities in KeepMyFamilySecure.

Qustodio CEO Eduardo Cruz Chief Executive said his company's Windows parental filter was vulnerable and he hoped to push out a fix within a few days.

Lenovo did not disclose how many machines were affected, but said that only machines shipped from September to December of last year had been pre-loaded with the vulnerable software.

Affected Lenovo products include laptops in its Yoga, Flex and MiiX lines as well as its E, G, U, Y and Z series, according to the company's support website.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

How Lenovo's Motorola is planning to compete in China

BEIJING - Motorola, the mobile handset maker bought by China's Lenovo Group Ltd from Google Inc for $2.9 billion, is optimistic about its prospects in the Chinese market, its president told Reuters.

Lenovo's acquisition, completed three months ago, ended Google's move into the consumer mobile handset business. The deal has turned personal computer-maker Lenovo into a challenger in the higher-end smartphone market, competing with Samsung Electronics and Apple In.

"The (Chinese) market itself is so big here and Motorola has no share today, so we believe that what we’re really going to succeed in doing is hopefully take some share from other people in the market," Rick Osterloh, President of Motorola Mobility told Reuters.

Motorola will compete in China with Apple and Samsung in the premium smartphone market and with the world's third biggest smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc in mid- and mid-high level phones. Lenovo is already the number two smartphone maker in China.

"Our approach is to have global products tailored and customised for local markets," Motorola's Osterloh said. Motorola will also stick to relatively high-end products, he said.

Bryan Ma, a Singapore-based analyst at tech research firm IDC, said Motorola might test the waters with smartphones designed for the Americas, but in the next 12-24 months they could announce more localised products.

"They're trying to introduce themselves to a new group of friends and trying to establish street cred," Ma said. "What they have in their pockets is assets from the U.S."

"The good thing is Lenovo has enough of a strong cash position and local channel presence that they can bankroll Motorola in the country for while," Ma said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

China’s Lenovo inches closer to a global tech title

HONG KONG — Lenovo Group Ltd is on track to overtake Hewlett-Packard Co as the world’s biggest PC maker by sales as soon as this year, making it the first Chinese company to grab the top spot globally in a technology sector.

The ThinkPad maker’s rise highlights the advance of China’s technology firms on the world stage in recent years thanks to a combination of aggressive pricing, overseas acquisitions and their taking advantage of a fast-growing home market.

Analysts, however, also warn that Lenovo’s rapid gains in market share have come at the expense of profit margins, while the company faces slowing growth in the market for personal computers and tough rivals in the tablet PC space.

“It’s just a matter of time before Lenovo becomes No. 1 and it won’t be surprising at all if it happens later this year,” said Frederick Wong, executive director at Avant Capital Management (Hong Kong) Ltd, which owns shares in Lenovo.

He added, however, that competition in the tablet sector and a weak PC market outlook could put pressure on Lenovo.

Lenovo, which became the world’s No. 2 PC vendor in the third quarter of 2011, had a 14.9 percent global market share in the April-June quarter this year, a mere 0.6 percentage point away from HP’s 15.5 percent, according to research firm IDC’s latest data. Figures from industry tracker Gartner show an even narrower gap, with Lenovo just 0.2 percentage point from HP.

In another technology sector, China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world’s No.2 maker of telecom equipment, had been expected to surpass Sweden’s Ericsson in 2011 sales. But slow telecom spending, stiff competition in the handset market and difficulties in tapping the massive U.S. market held it back.

Switching lanes

Lenovo’s rise has been helped by its purchase of Germany’s Medion and a joint venture with Japan’s NEC Corp last year, as well as its acquisition of IBM Corp’s PC business in 2005.

Investors have rewarded Lenovo for its market share gains, sending its stock up by around 16 percent this year and outpacing rivals HP, third-ranked Dell Inc and No. 4 Acer Inc, whose stocks have dropped over the same period.

Lenovo currently trades at a multiple of 12.5 times forward earnings, the second-highest among the top-five PC makers and well above the 4.6 times multiple for HP, Thomson Reuters Starmine data showed.

But profit margins have suffered. Lenovo had a 1.4 percent operating margin in the latest quarter, lower than HP’s 7.4 percent and Dell’s 6.2 percent, the data showed.

“HP, Dell and Acer have switched lanes in the PC race and passed the baton to Lenovo in terms of focusing on sales rather than margins,” said Dickie Chang, an analyst at IDC in Hong Kong.

Another risk is slowing growth in the PC market as the global economy, including Lenovo’s home turf and stronghold China, eases.

China accounts for about 42 percent of Lenovo’s total revenue, with the bulk of that coming from PC sales.

Global PC shipment growth was largely flat in the second quarter, marking the seventh straight quarter of low 0 to 5 percent growth for the industry.

“We remain positive on Lenovo’s market share expansion, but the absolute growth is nevertheless being negatively impacted by a slower market,” Jefferies said in a report. Jefferies has an “underperform” rating on Lenovo with a price target of HK$5.70.

Overall PC demand could pick up this year with the launch of Windows 8, though the catch is that competition in the sector for tablet PCs — not Lenovo’s strongest area — will heat up because the operating system is designed to run on laptops and tablets.

Mizuho analyst Charles Park forecasts the PC market will grow by just 3 percent this year.

Lenovo’s tablets, its LePads, will also face competition from new products, including the next versions of Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire and Apple Inc’s iPad, as well as Google Inc’s Nexus 7 and Microsoft Corp’s Surface.

source: interaksyon.com