In case you haven’t heard, it seems that Dell has recently been shipping out laptops that were discovered to have a serious security problem on them. Discovered by programmer Joe Nord, this security problem came in the form of a SSL certificate that has been installed on a number of Dell’s laptops called eDellRoot.
For those wondering what the big deal is, basically with the certificate being installed and stored locally, it also means that attackers could create a forged version of the signing key and expose the user to a variety of SSL-based attacks. Now the good news is that Dell’s issue is not the same as Lenovo’s Superfish from earlier this year, and the computer maker has since stepped forward to apologize over the scare.
According to a Dell spokesperson, “It was intended to provide the system service tag to Dell online support allowing us to quickly identify the computer model. This certificate is not being used to collect personal customer information.” Even better news is that if you haven’t figured out a way to remove it yet, Dell has posted instructions on how to permanently remove the certificate from your system.
If those steps are still a bit too technical for you, Dell is also expected to publish a software update later when they will scan the system and check for the certificate and remove it for you.