Comment by sigio
15 hours ago
Why do people even install 'drivers' for things like monitors. (Or usb devices running 'standard' protocols). The OS handles these just fine by itself.
15 hours ago
Why do people even install 'drivers' for things like monitors. (Or usb devices running 'standard' protocols). The OS handles these just fine by itself.
In this case, they aren't.
I woke up the other day to a notification that my LG monitor driver was installed, with a little window on how to use the on-screen crap.
Absolutely useless, since the buttons for the monitor are right there on the bottom of it, and probably easier to use than the software.
Indeed, our Windows 11 offline Steam box also needed to disable LG & Switch App in taskmanager, and set LG apps to manual start in Services.
Apparently the 3 applications have some sort of screen partitioning/sharing capabilities, but it is still unclear if the LG App was remote access or not.
So far, LG is earning a lot of justified bad press. Should have returned it when I had to turn off the screens power-save mode to get it to stop fading out randomly. =3
> Absolutely useless, since the buttons for the monitor are right there on the bottom of it
... and so out of arm's reach, right?
The article is about people NOT installing it but getting it installed anyway :)
As to why people do install such software? It sometimes provides additional features, controls and settings. For example with touchpad you could set the sensitivity, hot corners, set the scroll behaviour the way you like it, etc.
With monitors you might get a better colour profile (P3 instead of just sRGB), I don't know. I don't use monitors like this.
the OS handles these now by installing the malware. Zero click.
Sounds like this malware gets installed even if you don't manually install anything.
> Connecting some LG monitors to a Windows PC may automatically install software that promotes McAfee subscriptions
I too have a LG monitor, but haven't booted Windows in some days, guess I'll stay put in my Arch environment until they've fixed this shitshow.
But this assumes you plug in USBC .... Right? HDMI and display port can't....install over right?
I don't see any details in any of the texts I came across, but in theory the implementation could be that Windows sees the ID of the monitor once connected through any sort of connection, then when matching ID is found it installs the malware. Rather than the installer is sent from the monitor to the computer. Would make updates a lot easier, and if they really want to spread this malware, can activate it for a lot more monitors.
5 replies →
Windows automatically tries to download and install drivers for some hardware you plug in, including monitors. That's what is happening here.
The monitor itself isn't installing anything, Windows detects the device by unique ID, and uses Windows Update to get the driver which itself triggers a Windows Store application (malware) to install.
The monitor only sends a unique device ID, everything else is handled by Windows.
We have an offline account Windows 11 Steam box, and the stupid popup still hit our machine a few days back. It did ask for screen access (said no), but there is no obvious button to opt out of the adware popups (select don't show, and click X to close).
Disabled LG & Switch App in taskmanager auto start, and set to Manual for all 3 LG process names in Services.
A lot of bad karma, for such an buggy monitor that doesn't even work properly till you turn off the silly power-saver auto-dim mode. =3