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The Superfish Funder List

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21–30 of 90 posts

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#21

Surely Mossad are somewhere in there too? I can't imagine an intelligence agency not having an interest in this.

It is a clumsy implementation at best and not ideal for any covert operation, why would a serious intelligence agency have any interest in this?

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#22

Surely Mossad are somewhere in there too? I can't imagine an intelligence agency not having an interest in this.

It is a clumsy implementation at best and not ideal for any covert operation, why would a serious intelligence agency have any interest in this?

Free and easy intercepts with a straightforward "it wasn't us!".

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#23
post #6

Eh. Investors invest in lots of companies, some of which make pretty bad mistakes. I think Superfish should be forced to wither on the vine because of this - and especially because it pawned off responsibility by saying, "hey, it was those guys, not us!" as should Lenovo ("it is just theoretical!"), but I doubt the investors explicitly backed something with the intent to break security. Few do.

Few do, I can probably agree with that. But it's not like investors through money out of the window unknowingly of where it ends. They either knew about it and didn't care about it or they just didn't care about it in any case, because following due diligence would've raised some red lights.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a clumsy implementation at best and not ideal for any covert operation, why would a serious intelligence agency have any interest in this?

Free and easy intercepts with a straightforward "it wasn't us!".

Haha fair enough! I guess blaming private companies and investors is a good way to move attention from yourself.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#25

even thgough im Palestinian and these guys are Israeli, should we really be blaming superfish? this company makes software, seams like a bunch of hackers to me. Lenovo is the real culprit here.

Both.

Superfish is profiting, they're being held accountable for their actions. Lenovo is responsible, they are being shamed duly.

The same happens with, for example, gun manufacturers and other war profiteers.

I'm not trying to pick a side here, just pointing out: blame doesn't need to fall on just one party. They are partners in crime.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#26
post #2

>CoinBase, an similar anti-privacy company Really? How is looking at public blockchain data at all similar to installing malware?

I suppose the author missed the letter 'd' in this statement.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#27

See superfish advisors who are prof. from MIT, Yale... http://www.home.superfish.com/#!board-members/c1whv Professor Tomaso Poggio, PH.D – MIT Prof Lior Wolf – MIT/Tel Aviv Professor Yosi Keller – Yale/Bar-Ilan Olga Russakovsky, PH.D – Stanford (Fei-Fei) Ron Bekkerman, PH.D - University of Massachusetts

They're all in computer vision, machine learning, ect... I doubt they helped for more than the visual search engine.

Unless they want to be connected to superfish forever, now is the time to publicly distance themselves from it.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#28

even thgough im Palestinian and these guys are Israeli, should we really be blaming superfish? this company makes software, seams like a bunch of hackers to me. Lenovo is the real culprit here.

Yes, we should be blaming them. The product serves a bad purpose, and doesn't even have the redeeming quality of being well-implemented.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#29
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all in computer vision, machine learning, ect... I doubt they helped for more than the visual search engine.

I doubt the investors really knew about the MITM attacks with the universal private key either. I think Superfish and Komodia did something bad, but the buck should stop with them.

Why? It was probably pressure from the investors that drove them to do it. You can't say to someone "get this done no matter the cost" and then expect to be held blameless when they do something shady.

It's kind of like a mob boss who says to his lieutenant, "Boy, it sure would be helpful to us if that grocery store burned down". How else were they supposed to monetize their tech? They did exactly what everyone else does and found a way to use it for advertising.

Re: The Superfish Funder List

#30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're all in computer vision, machine learning, ect... I doubt they helped for more than the visual search engine.

Unless they want to be connected to superfish forever, now is the time to publicly distance themselves from it.

You overestimate how much people care outside of the tech community (which is not the same as the academic computing community).
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