A very frustrating Malware/Virus floating around lately that basically gives you strange random Adsense ads popups on basically any page and weird redirection when clicking on links.
Symptoms
- Redirected to Random sites when clicking on Links , Any link on any site ( I did notice that I was redirected to sites that contained commonly used search terms that I remember using in the past)
- Random little adsense popups on pretty much every site except for on my online banking webpage, Ads appeared on the bottom right of my screen usually those little iPhone shaped ads.
Why?
This malware is designed to make money for the creator through adsense revenue , so it doesn't seem particularly harmful but its very frustrating and as far as key logging or anything else goes I'm not sure how much info it can collect about you.
What didn't Work?
I tried quite a few virus / malware removal tools that failed to remove the issue
these are
- Kapersky Labs freeware Scan and Remove tools
-Adaware
- Spybot Search and Destroy
- Microsoft Security Essentials
- Malwarebytes
What worked?
The only tool that worked for me to remove the malware was ComboFix which can be downloaded from http://www.combofix.org/download.php
Every single virus removal forum I visited told me not to run this tool unless directed by a professional but in the end everyone seems to run it, Make sure that you disable any antivirus / malware software you have running, close all running programs and run at your own risk of course.
hooray that is the end, Yes I could've just told you the solution straight off