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It turns out that Lenovo has code in their BIOS which creates and maintains a backdoor executable in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x installs. Simply wiping the machine when you bring it home to remove the factory crap-ware is not enough to overcome this implementation. This issue is supposed to have been resolved via a recently released patch that doesn't remove but rather disables this 'feature' which is being called the Lenovo Service Engine.
Original Source for the news:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29497693&sid=ddf3e32512932172454de515091db014#p29497693
Link to patch:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/lse_bios_notebook
This exploit takes advantage of a Windows feature called Windows Platform Binary Table. This is essentially a method created for the purpose of enabling UEFI bioses to load extra binaries at boot time.
link to paper on WPBT:
http://feishare.com/attachments/article/298/windows-platform-binary-table.pdf
(Score: 3, Informative) by quadrox on Thursday August 13 2015, @07:22AM
Seriously, you are overreacting.
Yeah it's not quite as accurate as it could be, but in the end the result is the same. It doesn't matter if lenovo only fucks over some of their customers or every last one of them - the fact that they are doing this at all is what's important.
Which particular models are affected is a footnote compared to the overall story.