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when I go to google on firefox and search for a topic, I try to open a website and another website (morsearch, clickkick, etc) will open up instead into a new search engine with the same topic . What is this?

  • 4 replies
  • 68 have this problem
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  • Last reply by ayria

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I go to google. I type in "plants". A lot of sites will pop up in google. I click on a site (does not matter which usually). The site will then start to switch to a new url from (click kick, morsearch, etc) turning into a new search engine with the same topic and more options. I never get to the page I want unless I type the url directly into the address box. It always comes back with a search engine. So far I have found this only happens while starting in a search engine. When I get into the actual page, everything is fine. I am using McAfee for security and it hasn't caught a virus or anything yet. Help please! Thanks!

I go to google. I type in "plants". A lot of sites will pop up in google. I click on a site (does not matter which usually). The site will then start to switch to a new url from (click kick, morsearch, etc) turning into a new search engine with the same topic and more options. I never get to the page I want unless I type the url directly into the address box. It always comes back with a search engine. So far I have found this only happens while starting in a search engine. When I get into the actual page, everything is fine. I am using McAfee for security and it hasn't caught a virus or anything yet. Help please! Thanks!

All Replies (4)

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Install, update, and run these programs in this order. They are all free for personal use, but some have limited functionality in the "free mode" - but those are features you really don't need to find and remove the problem that you have.
(Not all programs detect the same Malware.)

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
SuperAntispyware - http://www.superantispyware.com/
AdAware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot Search & Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

If these don't find it or can't clear it, post in one of these forums for specialized malware removal help:
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/index.php
http://forum.aumha.org/
http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/
http://bleepingcomputer.com

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I did things in the order that the-edmeister suggested.

  1. Nothing useful from malwareBytes (which did remove 100 non-critical problems and a lot of temporary files)
  2. Nothing useful from SuperAntiSpyware (which did find some ugly cookies and one more real problem)
  3. Nothing at all from Lavasoft (as I found later), likely because it was running after the other two.

I left during Lavasoft's comparatively slow scan and came back to find that McAfee had cordoned off the problem for me in the interim. Apparently this was a new variant which had been in the wild only a few days; and McAfee sent an update while I was working on the issue with freely available tools.

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As of this morning, AdAware, Malwarebytes and Superantispyware have failed to fix this issue on my computer, even after updating all three. Since the above poster noted it is a new variant, I'm hopeful one of them will be updating their database soon.

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No success with Eset Security, Malwarebytes - trying Spybot and if that doesnt work Ad-Aware.

This thing is ugly.

        • update*****

None of this worked. I havent noticed the hijacking when using IE, but it still exists with Firefox when I search google or yahoo (havent tried other search engines). Quite annoying.

Modified by ayria