Why IBM got a reputation of destroying everything they touch?
After the Red Hat mess I see many people saying IBM destroys everything they touch, but I can't think of many examples of it. Can you tell me what else IBM has destroyed after acquiring it, or something good that they themselves developed and then ruined it with stupid corporate choices?
You are viewing a single comment
Thank God they sold Thinkpad, then...
Tho I'm not so sure if Lenovo is doing any better...
You mean the Chinese company that put keyloggers into their firmware, said sorry we didn't mean to when they were called out for it, but still didn't remove it?
Yeah... I'm gonna go with not much better.
I know about Superfish and the vulnerable (but not malicious in itself) firmware-embedded crapware. What was the keylogger story?
So it was in like 2013 or 14 so it was a long time ago and I might be remembering it wrong, but I remember it being reported that the firmware that was installed with Questionable functionality was found to be collecting and sending personal usage data back to Lenovo, specifically the Chinese branch based on the IP. I'm. Im not 100% sure if it was specifically keylogging, but it was definitely data that they had no business collecting so I might have remembered it as such.
I think you're probably referring to one of the first two things listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_incidents - Superfish was not in the firmware but was outright adware and a massive hazard (Lenovo got fined for it), while the Service Engine was just garbage with vulnerabilities but was indeed embedded in the firmware.
Exactly 🥹