Superfish
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Adi Pinhas (co-founder & CEO) Michael Chertok (co-founder and CTO) |
| Services | Visual search[1] |
| Revenue | ~$40 million |
Number of employees | 90 |
| Website | http://wwws.superfish.com/ |
Superfish is an advertising company that develops various advertising-supported software products based on a visual search engine. The company is based in Palo Alto, California, and was founded in 2006.[1] Its WindowShopper man-in-the-middle adware has been installed by Lenovo on some of its new laptops.[2]
History
Since its founding in 2006, Superfish has primarily developed algorithms for the comparison and matching of images with a team of "a dozen or so PhDs". It released its first product, WindowShopper, in 2011.[3]
Superfish initially received funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and to date has raised over $20 million, mostly from DFJ and Vintage Investment Partners.[4]
CEO Adi Pinhas in 2014 mentioned that "Visual search is not here to replace the keyboard ... Visual search is for the cases in which I have no words to describe what I see."[5]
As of 2014, Superfish products have over 80 million users.[6]
In February 2015, Superfish was found to have installed a universal self-signed certificate authority on Lenovo Yoga laptop computers bundled with the software; the certificate authority allows a man-in-the-middle attack to introduce ads even on encrypted pages. The certificate authority had the same private key across laptops; this allows third-party eavesdroppers to intercept communications if they extract the key.[7]
Products
Superfish's main product, WindowShopper, is installed as a man-in-the-middle proxy on some Lenovo laptops.[8][9] It injects advertising into results from Internet search engines; it also intercepts encrypted (SSL/TLS) connections.
WindowShopper is developed for desktop and mobile devices, and allows users to input an image and be directed to shopping Web sites to purchase similar products.[citation needed] It currently[when?] has approximately 100 million monthly users, and according to Xconomy, "a high conversion to sale rate for soft goods." Superfish's business model is based on receiving affiliate fees on each sale, varying between two and 20 percent depending on the product.[4]
In 2014, Superfish released new apps based on its image search technology, including LikeThat Pets, for finding adoptable pets.[6][10] Other products include LikeThat Décor and LikeThat Garden.
See also
- Browser hijacking
- Computer vision
- Concept based image indexing
- Content-based image retrieval
- Image processing
- Image retrieval
- Malware
References
- ^ a b Hoge, Patrick (21 October 2014). "Superfish dives deep into visual search". San Francisco Business Times. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
- ^ Williams, Owen (19 February 2015). "Lenovo caught installing adware on new computers". The Next Web. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
- ^ Craig, Elise (16 July 2014). "Superfish Aims to Dominate Visual Search, One Product at a Time". Xconomy. p. 1. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
- ^ a b Craig, Elise (16 July 2014). "Superfish Aims to Dominate Visual Search, One Product at a Time". Xconomy. p. 2. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
- ^ "What Will It Take for Visual Search to Catch On?". eMarketer. 11 November 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
- ^ a b Weiss, Vered (3 September 2014). "Adi Pinhas' Superfish #1 Fastest Growing Private Software Company in the US". Jewish Business News. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
- ^ Hern, Alex (19 February 2015). "Lenovo accused of compromising user security by installing adware on new PCs". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
- ^ Duckett, Chris (19 February 2015). "Lenovo accused of pushing Superfish self-signed MITM proxy". DNet. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
- ^ Williams, Owen (19 February 2015). "Lenovo caught installing adware on new computers". The Next Web. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
- ^ "PetMatch". Superfish. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
External links
- www.home.superfish.com — Superfish site