As a quick update to news stories yesterday reporting that keylogger software had been detected in new Samsung laptops:
Ben Grubb of The Age reports:
Late this afternoon, Samsung Australia said the allegations were “not true”.
“Our findings indicate that the person mentioned in the article used a security program called VIPRE [antivirus software] that mistook a folder created by Microsoft Live Application for … key logging software, during a virus scan.”
Read more in The Age.
Emma Woolacott of TG Daily also reports Samsung’s denial and explanation:
It says the confusion arose because VIPRE mistook Microsoft’s Live Application multi-language support folder – labeled ‘SL’ folder – for the StarLogger keylogging software. Depending on the language, explains the company, under C:\windows folders ‘SL’ simply stands for Slovene, in the same way as ‘EN’ for English.
All this still leaves the question open as to why the supervisor told Hassan that the key-logging software was preinstalled in the first place. Customers may be reassured to hear that their every movement isn’t in fact being recorded – but they may not be equally impressed by Samsung sales staff’s knowledge of their own products.
Indeed.
UPDATE: GFI Security has owned responsibility for the problem with the false-positive that VIPRE gave. See their post, “Samsung Laptops do not have a keylogger (and it was our fault)”.