Dealing With Computer Virus

Maddox

Protestant
Heritage
I somehow got a trojan or something on my computer that is trying to redirect my browser URL to another site, until BitDefender stops it. It happens when I'm on a site and I navigate around the site. And while BitDefender prevents it from redirecting, it can't seem to find the virus and quarantine it.

I've also tried a few different softwares like Malwarebytes to get rid of it but none of them can seem to detect what's causing the problem.
 
I somehow got a trojan or something on my computer that is trying to redirect my browser URL to another site, until BitDefender stops it. It happens when I'm on a site and I navigate around the site. And while BitDefender prevents it from redirecting, it can't seem to find the virus and quarantine it.

I've also tried a few different softwares like Malwarebytes to get rid of it but none of them can seem to detect what's causing the problem.
Is this happening on a specific browser or the whole OS? Usually, when you are infected on the OS, it's too late and you are better off backing up your data and re-installing the OS.
 
Sounds like it could be related to adware program or unwanted extensions/add-ons.

Have you tried the below link's step-by-step instructions?

 
Some additional tips for the future:

If you are visiting a suspicious site or downloading files, you can scan it with VirusTotal, which uses every kind of cybersecurity scanner.


Make sure to securely harden your Windows. There's many guides on YouTube of how to do that.


I found this video recommended to me at the top of my search results and the bloke in the video seems to know what he is talking about.

 
I somehow got a trojan or something on my computer that is trying to redirect my browser URL to another site, until BitDefender stops it. It happens when I'm on a site and I navigate around the site. And while BitDefender prevents it from redirecting, it can't seem to find the virus and quarantine it.

I've also tried a few different softwares like Malwarebytes to get rid of it but none of them can seem to detect what's causing the problem.
Extremely late response, but this sounds like a pretty standard browser hijacker. One of the most common types of malware these days, basically all it does is install a modified version of Chrome which has various ads and redirects to generate money. Presumably also mines crypto and tracks your passwords and so on. It quietly modifies all your shortcuts to your browser so that they send you to this modified browser instead of your actual browser. Usually your actual Chrome install is left intact, you just have no shortcuts on your desktop, start menu or taskbar that lead to it.

Just running ADWCleaner and Malwarebytes should fix it. ADWCleaner actually even goes through the trouble of restoring your shortcuts. But you can never really know for sure if your computer is clean afterwards, because most people don't know this, but creating malware that goes undetected by all anti-malware software is actually comically easy and a script kiddie could do it with some pre-made tools found on GitHub. There are undetected silent XMR miners which are hard to notice and to manually remove even if you know a lot about this stuff.

You could run something like TronScript for a thorough cleansing (I cannot stress this enough, read the manual before using it), but if possible, I would just wipe everything and be more careful in the future. Only way you get a browser hijacker is by making a very long series of pretty obvious mistakes. Next time you download a cracked videogame or a cheat tool for a videogame or whatever else, make sure you're at least getting it from a reputable source which has been vouched for by a lot of people in a forum or subreddit.
 
Extremely late response, but this sounds like a pretty standard browser hijacker. One of the most common types of malware these days, basically all it does is install a modified version of Chrome which has various ads and redirects to generate money. Presumably also mines crypto and tracks your passwords and so on. It quietly modifies all your shortcuts to your browser so that they send you to this modified browser instead of your actual browser. Usually your actual Chrome install is left intact, you just have no shortcuts on your desktop, start menu or taskbar that lead to it.

Just running ADWCleaner and Malwarebytes should fix it. ADWCleaner actually even goes through the trouble of restoring your shortcuts. But you can never really know for sure if your computer is clean afterwards, because most people don't know this, but creating malware that goes undetected by all anti-malware software is actually comically easy and a script kiddie could do it with some pre-made tools found on GitHub. There are undetected silent XMR miners which are hard to notice and to manually remove even if you know a lot about this stuff.

You could run something like TronScript for a thorough cleansing (I cannot stress this enough, read the manual before using it), but if possible, I would just wipe everything and be more careful in the future. Only way you get a browser hijacker is by making a very long series of pretty obvious mistakes. Next time you download a cracked videogame or a cheat tool for a videogame or whatever else, make sure you're at least getting it from a reputable source which has been vouched for by a lot of people in a forum or subreddit.
I ended up uninstalling Chrome, which I think got rid of it.

Could installing a Chrome plugin infect the browser with this type of hijacker? I'm thinking this might've been how it happened.
 
Could installing a Chrome plugin infect the browser with this type of hijacker? I'm thinking this might've been how it happened.
Possibly. The Chrome Web Store has pretty laughable security and shady things have gone undetected for years in there. But I haven't heard about this happening from that. Usually it's from a shady installer/executable, which is why I brought up cracked videogames and cheat tools, which are usually how people get infected with this stuff, in my experience. You can easily get such a file from an ad too, but that shouldn't be a problem unless you open the file.
 
Back
Top