Lenovo Crapware Tool

Lenovo late last Friday released a promised tool to delete the Superfish Visual Discovery adware from its consumer PCs.

The tool automates the manual process that Lenovo described earlier in the week after the Superfish "crapware" exploded in its face. The same tool also deletes the self-signed certificate that experts said was a huge security threat to anyone with a Superfish-equipped Lenovo system.

Lenovo confirmed that it is working with two of its partners, antivirus vendor McAfee and Windows-maker Microsoft, to automatically scrub or isolate Superfish and remove the certificate, for those customers who do not hear about its cleaning tool.

"We are working with McAfee and Microsoft to have the Superfish software and certificate quarantined or removed using their industry-leading tools and technologies," Lenovo said in a statement. "These actions have already started and will automatically fix the vulnerability even for users who are not currently aware of the problem."

The reference to already-begun efforts pertain to Microsoft's decision Friday to issue an anti-malware signature for its free Windows Defender and Security Essentials programs, then push the signature to Windows PCs running that software.