No 15 years ago Microsoft would have been the ones installing it.
I think Microsoft went from being a hated software giant to sort of an underdog vis-a-vis Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
They are very big and strong no doubt, but I think the attitude they are projecting since switching CEO recently, their open source efforts, and such make them look pretty good PR-wise among the tech crowd.
it is actually an NSA key. If the NSA is going to use Microsoft products for classified traffic, they're going to install their own cryptography. They're not going to want to show it to anyone, not even Microsoft. They are going to want to sign their own modules. So the backup key could also be an NSA internal key, so that they could install strong cryptography on Microsoft products for their own internal use.
Though given alternative methods of bypassing any Microsoft security, not really necessary.
In the past Microsoft would have been both installing it and have their security tool removing it, left hand does not know what the right hand do in large organization, then after figuring out they would whitelist their own spyware from the removal tool. This may have actually happened.
The rest is simply PR, microsoft is still the evil corp it used to be but has to fight other evil corps to keep a share of a market it once dominated. Microsoft had too much money to burn to die quickly, its agony will take quite some time.
> microsoft is still the evil corp it used to be but has to fight other evil corps to keep a share of a market it once dominated. Microsoft had too much money to burn to die quickly, its agony will take quite some time.
I don't buy it. I think Microsoft seems to have actually made real changes. If you want an example of what a giant evil tech corporation dying slowly looks like, take a look at Oracle. Their core business is basically obsolete, but they'll go on killing open-source projects and squeezing their locked-in enterprise customers for many years.
They are not removing someone else's software though, they are alerting you to a security issue, recommending removal, and providing the tools to do so. That's exactly what an antivirus is supposed to do.
Sorry, but as one who was on Slashdot from pre-userid days, and is in general a huge critic of the company, bullshit.
Microsoft is in a hard place in terms of determining what is or isn't allowed on their systems (due in large part to their own past and quite probably ongoing monopoly abuses), but fixing obvious flaws is to be applauded.
I don't champion the company often, but they're doing the right thing here. Actually, sanctioning Lenovo for letting this happen might be another option they've got. Though something tells me they won't play that card (and quite possibly cannot).
This is only is if Windows Defender is operational - in which case the user definitely wants the malware to be disabled/removed. It's akin to having a SPAM defender - in which you grant administrative rights to the owner of the Anti-SPAM tool to redirect spam to the bit-bucket.
Agreed. Seems like the lesser of two evils in this case. I applaud MSFT for realizing that the vast majority of their users will not have the impetus nor the requisite skill to remove this from their machine.
For all we know, Lenovo and Microsoft have been in communication and Lenovo asked or was ok with Microsoft doing this via Defender. Also, Defender specifically flags this issue as a "CompromisedCert", indicating that the impetus for removing it was not necessarily the app itself but because the private key for the cert was found and leaked everywhere.
I'm generally in favor of MS doing this specific thing, but there is potential for abuse here.