alt Hacker News> It's Windows Update that's installing LG crapware upon seeing relevant hardware IDs
This is also a misrepresentation. Microsoft has provided LG with a certificate to sign its driver packages with, and allows LG to upload packages to Windows Update, which includes a feature to install sidecar applications. Now, the spirit of this feature is that any application is meant to provide genuine configuration functionality or some graphical front end to the driver's configuration knobs.
LG then abused that feature to provide adware. Now, there are millions of hardware vendors. One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect.
Sometimes one actually wants the app that comes with the device, like AMD's and NVIDIA's configuration trays.
Even so, I fully expect that after this debacle MS will disable this stuff. There is precedent for this. Synaptics/ELAN/Alps touchpad tray applications largely disappeared after MS implemented precision touchpads somewhere in 2015, and suddenly Windows touchpads became as precise as those on Macs. Likewise with RGB peripherals. Even GPU driver applications have increasingly become less useful as the most important features—power control, adaptive sync, HDR, etc have moved into native Windows settings.
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> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time
Why not? Microsoft isn't a struggling startup. They can afford to do just that.
>Even so, I fully expect that after this debacle MS will disable this stuff.
Isn't the debacle over? MS know about this by now. What's stopping them from killing it today?
A late resolution is barely a resolution at all. None of this functionality needs new Windows features.
My point is not to shift the blame to Microsoft; it's primarily LG that's at fault here.
My point here is simply that it's not the monitor that is installing this. Neither the malware nor the URLs to malware exist on the device - they get fetched as part of normal OS-side auto-provisioning, which is the part that was compromised.
I agree with you on the precedent
> after MS implemented precision touchpads somewhere in 2015, and suddenly Windows touchpads became as precise as those on Macs.
There’s still a world of difference between a MacBook touchpad and a windows one. My work laptop (18 month old dell XPS) can’t hold a candle to my 6 year old MacBook’s trackpad.
> Likewise with RGB peripherals. Even GPU driver applications have increasingly become less useful as the most important features—power control, adaptive sync, HDR, etc have moved into native Windows settings.
The peripherals still need the addons though; I have ASUS armory crate, Corsair iCue and MSI center for my Motherboard, cooler and GPU respectively. They all suck.
I can only imagine the meetings at microsoft HQ where they all sat around a table and crossed their fingers and hoped that vendors would act in the spirit of their design.
The commercial software landscape more and more reminds me of a civil war torn town. Everyone shooting at everyone, a dark forest through and through
> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect.
If you're going to allow 3rd parties to install software on potentially billions of computers with far reaching privileges then you better have something in place other than 'just trust me bro'.
If they aren't willing to vet, they should at least be keeping the update minimal. Ie no 'sidecar' apps.
Self signing a driver should mean just that, not a driver, and a load of other things we feel like foisting on the user.
Half the reason I moved to Linux is because I just wanted to print something without getting a load of advertising from a printer company.
> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect.
Apple seem to do a pretty decent job of just that
> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect.
Maybe not, but LG has violated this trust and should therefore be either fined or severely restricted by Microsoft. Banning will likely cause more problems than solutions, but they shouldn't get away with this.
Adware was a huge problem during the Windows XP era, can't believe it's coming back now through Microsoft's official channels.
Also I doubt there's actually millions of hardware vendors. But that aside, Microsoft has a duty to vet everything that they offer through their channels. If it's too expensive for them to do, do like Apple did and have those that want to make use of their distribution network (and trust) pay them.