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DELL HAS APOLOGISED for shipping PCs with a vulnerability and has issued a software tool to remove the problem.
The issue comes from an SSL certificate that would allow attackers to impersonate a HTTPS site and carry out man-in-the-middle attacks against users. Dell explained the certificate, called eDellRoot, wasn’t adware or malware, but a support tool designed to make it easier to service their systems.
We deeply regret that this has happened”, it said in a post. ”The certificate is not malware or adware. Rather, it was intended to provide the system service tag to Dell online support allowing us to quickly identify the computer model, making it easier and faster to service our customers”.
This certificate is not being used to collect personal computer information. It’s also important to note that the certificate will not reinstall itself once it is properly removed using the recommended Dell process.
As well as providing instructions for permanently removing the certificate, and an uninstaller app, Dell will also push a software update later today that will check for the certificate and remove it if detected. It also said that it will be removed from all Dell systems in future.
If you bought a Dell PC recently and want to check yourself, you can do so by opening search and typing in ‘mmc’ or ‘certmgr.msc’ to open the certificate manager. When it does, click on Trusted Root Certification Authorities > Certificates and search for the eDellRoot certificate.
When you find it, select it and remove it by clicking the red x in the toolbar.
The issue first came to light over the weekend after a number of security researchers and groups expressed concern over the certificate.
Earlier this year, Lenovo was caught with a similar security flaw. The Superfish was installed by the company as a way of serving up extra ads, but security flaws meant any attacker could carry out man-in-the-middle attacks, allowing them to interpret messages like passwords, financial details and personal information.
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Some bigger computer companies built in items to keep the mainframes at a certain speed then charged for speeding them up. An engineer would go out and remove a part which was like a restrictor on a car thus allowing the computer go faster. Charging plenty of money for doing so.
Most things have built in obsolescence now.
But car companies do the same thing. Same engine giving different power (or emissions cough VW) outputs depending on the software. Pay a mechanic to re-map the engine to get more power and sometimes more fuel efficiency from the engine.
You really wonder eh
This is why I put clean Ubuntu installations on my machines…
Installed linux mint yesterday on a VM as I normally use Mac and Ubuntu, mint is not a bad OS for anyone jumping across from Windows
I bought a new laptop from Dell recently with a “Killer” Nic. No linux drivers :( WIndows 10 makes me cry. So the laptop is using a wifi dongle until I can find time to work a solution.
Wouldn’t happen if ruth coppinger was at the helm :-o
All these things are easy to find if you have anything about pcs and can usually be fixed easily so that isnt the problem the problem is if yhe wrong person finds it
To be fair.. DELL rarely make this type of mistake
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