Last year’s Superfish and eDellRoot bloatware mishaps exposed the security nightmare that pre-installed software updaters can create on new laptops. And while these two high-profile incidents made the issue public, they’re hardly isolated cases. Many popular consumer and business laptops from manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and Acer include bloatware that have a...

Microsoft has taken steps to impede the next Superfish from impacting users. Superfish was pre-installed adware found on new Lenovo laptops earlier this year. The software exposes users to man-in-the-middle attacks because of the way it injects advertisements into the browser. It comes with a self-signed root cert that generates certs for HTTPS connections, replacing...

eDellroot is not the only self-signed trusted root certificate on Dell computers. Researchers at Duo Security found two more on a Dell Inspiron 14-inch laptop purchased by Darren Kemp, one of its researchers who is based in Calgary, Canada, including one cert related to eDellroot that also ships with a corresponding private key, and a...