Superfish is a type of third-party software product that many consider to be a form of adware, or even malware, because of its tendency to leave systems open to cyberattack. Superfish is commonly known as a product that PC maker Lenovo put into its factory-direct software package in 2014.
The Superfish software is essentially a type of advertising-based visual search product built as a new form of guided visual search. However, security experts criticized the design of the software, such as where a self-signed SSL certificate allows for a “man in the middle” attack. This led to much criticism of Superfish being bundled into Lenovo software, and the use of products like Windows Defender to mitigate the effects of Superfish. It turned out that people had been advocating against Superfish as early as 2010, because of concerns with rootkits and other problems, when Superfish software had been installed on their computers in a bundled setup.
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