Lenovo Site Hacked, Lizard Squad Claims Credit

Lenovo's official website has been hacked by alleged Lizard Squad members Rory Andrew Godfrey and Ryan King. Those attempting to access the page were greeted with a slide-show of webcam pics of, apparently of the two, sitting at their computer, along with a link to a Twitter account claiming to represent the hacker group Lizard Squad - all set to the sounds of "Breaking Free" from the High School Musical. The hijacked link to the slideshow is contained within the heading that directs a site visitor on how to remove the Superfish vulnerability at the top of the page. In the Source code of the hacked webpage, according to Hacker News, the description reads: "The new and improved rebranded Lenovo website featuring Ryan King and Rory Andrew Godfrey."

The cyber-attack against Lenovo, conjectured the tech site, could be in retaliation to the Superfish malware incident. Early this week, it was discovered that Lenovo had been pre-installing the controversial Superfish adware to its laptops, compromising the computer's encryption certificates to "quietly" include more ads on Google search. The Superfish Malware raised serious security concerns about the company's move for breaking fundamental web security protocols, because anyone with the password that unlocks that single password-protected certificate authority would be able to completely bypass the computer's web encryption. Superfish is identified by antivirus products as adware and advised to be removed. Superfish injects third-party ads on Google searches and websites without the user's permission. The malware appears to affect Internet Explorer and Google Chrome on the Lenovo computers. The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) in fact on warned Friday that Superfish malware could be exploited to "allow a remote attacker to read all encrypted web browser traffic (HTTPS), successfully impersonate (spoof) any website, or perform other attacks on the affected system."

Lenovo eventually released a Superfish removal tool for cleaning affected computers. But the fact that it admitted that it did pre-installed the malware angered many in the Internet community. Hours before the cyber-attack on the Lenovo website, said Gizmodo, the Lizard Squad sent a Twitter message saying: "Expect more lizard mischief soon."