Joseph Bonneau and Jeremy Gillula write:
Over the past week many more details have emerged about the HTTPS-breaking Superfish software that Lenovo pre-installed on its laptops for several months. As is often the case with breaking security incidents, most of what we know has come from security engineers volunteering their time to study the problem and sharing their findings via blogs and social media.
Unfortunately, the security implications have gone from bad to worse the more we’ve learned. For instance, researchers have determined that the software library Superfish uses to intercept traffic—developed by a company known as Komodia—is present in more than a dozen other software products, including parental control software and (supposed) privacy-enhancing/ad-blocking software. All of these products have the same vulnerability that Superfish does: anyone with a little technical know-how could intercept and modify your otherwise secure HTTPS traffic.
Read more on EFF.