Welcome! Just a short post before I call it a day. I found yet another interesting file. It was was signed by Tiki Taka.
You may see Tiki Taka appear as the publisher when double-clicking on the Player.exe file. Viewing the certificate information is also possible by looking under the digital signature tab for the file. Here the certificate says that Tiki Taka is located in Dublin, Ireland.
I decided to upload the Tiki Taka file to VirusTotal. 25% of the scanners detected the file. PUA/Outbrowse.Gen, Trojan.OutBrowse.68, Win32/OutBrowse.BU potentially unwanted, PUP.Optional.OutBrowse and OutBrowse Revenyou are some of the detection names.
Did you also find an Tiki Taka? Do you remember the download link? Please post it in the comments below and I’ll upload it to VirusTotal to see if that one is also detected.
This page shows how to remove jsl.infostatsvc.com from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
Does this sound like what you are seeing right now? You see jsl.infostatsvc.com in your browser’s status bar while browsing web sites that generally don’t load any content from third party domains. Maybe the jsl.infostatsvc.com domain show up when performing a search at the Google.com search engine?
Here is how the jsl.infostatsvc.com status bar message looked like on my computer while searching at my favourite search engine Google:
The following are some of the statusbar messages you may see in your browser’s status bar:
Waiting for jsl.infostatsvc.com…
Transferring data from jsl.infostatsvc.com…
Looking up jsl.infostatsvc.com…
Read jsl.infostatsvc.com
Connected to jsl.infostatsvc.com…
If this description sounds like your computer, you probably have some potentially unwanted program installed on your machine that makes the jsl.infostatsvc.com domain appear in your browser. So there’s no idea contacting the owner of the web site you were browsing. The jsl.infostatsvc.com statusbar messages are not coming from them. I’ll do my best to help you with the jsl.infostatsvc.com removal in this blog post.
I found jsl.infostatsvc.com on one of the lab computers where I have some potentially unwanted programs running. I’ve talked about this in some of the previous blog posts. The potentially unwanted programs was installed on purpose, and from time to time I check if something new has appeared, such as pop-up windows, new tabs in the browsers, injected ads on website that usually don’t show ads, or if some new files have been saved to the hard-drive.
jsl.infostatsvc.com was created on 2013-07-23. jsl.infostatsvc.com resolves to the 70.186.131.246 IP address. The domain is protected by Domains By Proxy LLC.
If you are wondering if there are many others out seeing jsl.infostatsvc.com in the browser, the answer is probably yes. Check out the traffic rank from Alexa:
The bad news with this type of status bar message is that it can probably be caused by many variants of potentially unwanted programs. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the status bar messages.
So, what can be done? To remove jsl.infostatsvc.com you need to examine your computer for potentially unwanted programs and uninstall them. Here’s my suggested removal procedure:
The first thing I would do to remove jsl.infostatsvc.com is to examine the programs installed on the machine, by opening the “Uninstall programs” dialog. You can open this dialog from the Windows Control Panel. If you are using one of the more recent versions of Windows you can just type in “uninstall” in the Control Panel’s search field to find that dialog:
Click on the “Uninstall a program” link and the Uninstall programs dialog will open up:
Do you see something shady in there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if something was installed approximately about the same time as you started seeing the jsl.infostatsvc.com status bar messages.
Then you can examine you browser add-ons. Potentially unwanted program often show up under the add-ons dialog in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there something that looks suspicious? Anything that you don’t remember installing?
I think most users will be able to track down and uninstall the potentially unwanted program with the steps outlined above, but in case that did not work you can try the FreeFixer removal tool to identify and remove the potentially unwanted program. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I started develop about 8 years ago. Freefixer is a tool built to manually find and uninstall unwanted software. When you’ve found the unwanted files you can simply tick a checkbox and click on the Fix button to remove the unwanted file.
FreeFixer’s removal feature is not locked down like many other removal tools out there. It won’t require you to pay for the program just when you are about to remove the unwanted files.
And if you’re having difficulties determining if a file is clean or potentially unwanted in FreeFixer’s scan result, click on the More Info link for the file. That will open up your browser with a page which contains more details about the file. On that web page, check out the VirusTotal report which can be quite useful:
An example of FreeFixer’s “More Info” links. Click for full size.
Did you find any potentially unwanted program on your machine? Did that stop jsl.infostatsvc.com? Please post the name of the potentially unwanted program you uninstalled from your machine in the comment below.
Hello there guys and gals. This saturday night I wanted to talk about an adware called SalePlus and give you some removal instructions. This seems to be a variant of UniSales that I’ve previously blogged about. If you got SalePlus running on your machine, you will notice ads labeled “Ads by SalePlus” or “Ads by SalePlus” inserted into web pages and new add-ons installed into Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. I’ll show how to remove SalePlus in this blog post with the FreeFixer removal tool.
Removing SalePlus is pretty easy with FreeFixer. Just select the SalePlus files for removal and then click the Fix button and the problem will be solved.
You’ll need to remove the Chrome extensions manually from the Chrome settings page.
Hope that helped you to figure out how to do the removal.
Any idea how you got SalePlus on your computer? Please let me and the readers know by posting a comments. Thank you!
Hi there. Found an adware called SpeeditApp tonight and wanted give you some removal instructions. SpeeditApp appears to be a variant of Graftor. If SpeeditApp is running on your machine, you will see ads labeled SpeeditApp Ads appearing while searching at Google.
I’ll show how to remove SpeeditApp in this blog post with the FreeFixer removal tool.
SpeeditApp is distributed by a method called bundling. Bundling means that a piece of software is included in other software’s installers. This is how SpeeditApp was disclosed in the installer when I found it.
As always when I run into some new bundled software I uploaded it to VirusTotal to check if the anti-malware programs there detect anything interesting. Of the 57 scanners, 16 detected the file. The SpeeditApp files are detected as AddLyrics_r.ME by AVG, a variant of Win32/Adware.AddLyrics.DW by ESET-NOD32, Gen:Variant.Graftor.179236 by GData, Trj/Genetic.gen by Panda and Adware.AddLyrics/Variant by SUPERAntiSpyware.
You probably want to remove SpeeditApp. You can just select the SpeeditApp files in FreeFixer for removal. A restart of your computer may be required to complete the removal. Problem taken care of.
Hope that helped you with the removal.
Did you also find SpeeditApp on your computer? Any idea how it installed? Please share by posting a comment. Thank you!
Hi there! Hope you are having a good saturday night. Just wanted to give you the heads up on files digitally signed by TAIMED LLC.
Windows will display TAIMED LLC as the publisher when running the file. The certificate information can also be viewed from Windows Explorer. According to the certificate we can see that TAIMED LLC appears to be located in Lubertsy, Russia and that the certificate is issued by COMODO Code Signing CA 2.
So, why did I put up this blog post? Well, the thing is that the TAIMED LLC file is detected by a few of the antimalware scanners, according to VirusTotal. Tencent classifies Game_of_Thrones_S04E02_HDTV_x264-2HD[ettv].exe as Trojan.Win32.Qudamah.Gen.3
In addition to that, if you run the file, it will install the Jelbrus Secure Web adware. I’m sure the other anti-virus program will detect this in a few days.
Did you also find a file digitally signed by TAIMED LLC? Where did you find it and are the anti-virus programs detecting it? I found it at The Pirate Bay. Please share in the comments below.
This page shows how to remove asrv-a.akamaihd.net from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
Did you just see asrv-a.akamaihd.net in the status bar of your browser and ask yourself where it came from? Or did asrv-a.akamaihd.net show up while you search for something on one of the major search engines, such as the Google.com search engine?
Here is how the asrv-a.akamaihd.net connection looked like in my network log. The connection was made when I searched at Google.
The actual url is https://asrv-a.akamaihd.net/sd/9717/1001.js. When loaded, a code snippet is returned, that mentions the gal.adviceoncarsse.com (37.58.102.34) domain.
Here are some of the status bar messages you may see in your browser’s status bar:
Waiting for asrv-a.akamaihd.net…
Transferring data from asrv-a.akamaihd.net…
Looking up asrv-a.akamaihd.net…
Read asrv-a.akamaihd.net
Connected to asrv-a.akamaihd.net…
If this description sounds like your story, you almost certainly have some potentially unwanted program installed on your computer that makes the asrv-a.akamaihd.net domain appear in your browser. So don’t write angry emails to the website you were browsing, they are almost certainly not responsible for the asrv-a.akamaihd.net status bar messages. The potentially unwanted program on your machine is. I’ll do my best to help you with the asrv-a.akamaihd.net removal in this blog post.
If you have been spending some time on this blog already know this, but if you are new: A little while back I dedicated some of my lab machines and knowingly installed some potentially unwanted programs on them. Since then I have been tracking the behaviour on these machines to see what kinds of advertisements that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the potentially unwanted program auto-updates, or if it installs additional potentially unwanted programs on the computers. I first noticed the asrv-a.akamaihd.net in Mozilla Firefox’s status bar on one of these lab computers.
asrv-a.akamaihd.net resolves to the 23.62.6.72 address.
So, how do you remove asrv-a.akamaihd.net from your browser? On the machine where asrv-a.akamaihd.net showed up in the status bar I had PriceFountain, WebWaltz, SpeedChecker and YTDownloader installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the browser from loading data from asrv-a.akamaihd.net.
The bad news with status bar messages such as this one is that it can be caused by many variants of potentially unwanted programs, not just the potentially unwanted program that’s installed on my system. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the statusbar messages.
Anyway, here’s my suggestion for the asrv-a.akamaihd.net removal:
The first thing I would do to remove asrv-a.akamaihd.net is to examine the programs installed on the machine, by opening the “Uninstall programs” dialog. You can open this dialog from the Windows Control Panel. If you are using one of the more recent versions of Windows you can just type in “uninstall” in the Control Panel’s search field to find that dialog:
Click on the “Uninstall a program” link and the Uninstall programs dialog will open up:
Do you see something suspicious listed there or something that you don’t remember installing? Tip: Sort on the “Installed On” column to see if some program was installed about the same time as you started observing the asrv-a.akamaihd.net status bar messages.
The next thing to check would be your browser’s add-ons. Potentially unwanted program often appear under the add-ons dialog in Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari. Is there anything that looks suspicious? Something that you don’t remember installing?
I think most users will be able to identify and uninstall the potentially unwanted program with the steps outlined above, but in case that did not work you can try the FreeFixer removal tool to identify and remove the potentially unwanted program. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I started develop many years ago. It’s a tool designed to manually find and uninstall unwanted software. When you’ve found the unwanted files you can simply tick a checkbox and click on the Fix button to remove the unwanted file.
FreeFixer’s removal feature is not locked like many other removal tools out there. It won’t require you to pay a fee just when you are about to remove the unwanted files.
And if you’re having a hard time determining if a file is legitimate or potentially unwanted in FreeFixer’s scan report, click on the More Info link for the file. That will open up your web browser with a page which contains additional information about the file. On that web page, check out the VirusTotal report which can be very useful:
An example of FreeFixer’s “More Info” links. Click for full size.
Did this blog post help you to remove asrv-a.akamaihd.net? Please let me know or how I can improve this blog post.
I was examining a network log this morning and found that Mozilla Firefox makes a connection to fhr.data.mozilla.com:
Why is Firefox sending data to fhr.data.mozilla.com? The answer is a feature called Firefox Health Report (FHR) that sends metrics to the Mozilla servers. The FAQ explains what data kind of data is sent, and what’s not sent:
For example, FHR sends data to Mozilla on things like: operating system, PC/Mac, number of processors, Firefox version, the number and type of add-ons. The data collected by FHR is tied to a Document ID that corresponds to a browser installation (explained above in question #4) so that the data can be correlated across a limited window of time.
FHR does not collect email addresses or track website visits, which services users are logged into, downloads, or search details, nor does it collect other information which directly identifies you as a user.
If you’d like to view the health report for your browser, type in about:healthreport in the address bar and the health report should appear:
According to the report, I should be able to see more interesting data the more I use the browser. That seems a bit strange, since I’ve been using the browser A LOT. But I’ll check back later on to see if something more interesting appears. If so, I’ll add some more screenshots.
This page shows how to remove lightbox.linkbolic.com from Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
Did you just interrupt your work because you noticed lightbox.linkbolic.com in your browser’s status bar? You are not alone. I also got the lightbox.linkbolic.com status bar message while browsing. Please read on…
Here is a screenshot on lightbox.linkbolic.com from my system:
The following are some of the status bar notifications you may see in your browser’s status bar:
Waiting for lightbox.linkbolic.com…
Transferring data from lightbox.linkbolic.com…
Looking up lightbox.linkbolic.com…
Read lightbox.linkbolic.com
Connected to lightbox.linkbolic.com…
If this sounds like what you are seeing on your computer, you presumably have some potentially unwanted program installed on your machine that makes the lightbox.linkbolic.com domain appear in your browser. Contacting the owner for the site you were at would be a waste of time. The lightbox.linkbolic.com status bar messages are not coming from them. I’ll try help you with the lightbox.linkbolic.com removal in this blog post.
Those that have been following this blog already know this, but here we go: Some time ago I dedicated a few of my lab systems and deliberately installed a few potentially unwanted programs on them. I have been monitoring the actions on these systems to see what kinds of ads that are displayed. I’m also looking on other interesting things such as if the potentially unwanted program updates itself, or if it downloads additional potentially unwanted programs on the computers. I first noticed the lightbox.linkbolic.com in Mozilla Firefox’s statusbar on one of these lab computers.
lightbox.linkbolic.com was created on 2014-05-15. linkbolic.com resolves to the 46.105.156.71 IP address and lightbox.linkbolic.com to 72.21.91.50.
I also found the cjs.linkbolic.com in use and it resolves to 93.184.220.50.
Update 2015-06-11: I’ve also seen ctx.linkbolic.com (93.184.220.5) in use.
So, how do you remove lightbox.linkbolic.com from your web browser? On the machine where lightbox.linkbolic.com showed up in the statusbar I had TornTV installed. I removed it with FreeFixer and that stopped the browser from loading data from lightbox.linkbolic.com.
The issue with status bar messages like this one is that it can be caused by many variants of potentially unwanted programs, not just the potentially unwanted program that’s installed on my computer. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the status bar messages.
So, what can be done to solve the problem? To remove lightbox.linkbolic.com you need to examine your computer for potentially unwanted programs and uninstall them. Here’s my suggested removal procedure:
Review what programs you have installed in the Add/Remove programs dialog in the Windows Control Panel. Do you see anything that you don’t remember installing or that was recently installed?
You can also review the browser add-ons. Same thing here, do you see something that you don’t remember installing?
If that does not help, you can give FreeFixer a try. FreeFixer is built to assist users when manually tracking down potentially unwanted programs. It is a freeware utility that I’ve been working since 2006 and it scans your machine at lots of locations where unwanted software is known to hook into your computer. If you would like to get additional details about a file in FreeFixer’s scan result, you can just click the More Info link for that file and a web page with a VirusTotal report will open up, which can be very useful to determine if the file is safe or malware:
An example of FreeFixer’s “More Info” links. Click for full size.
Did this blog post help you to remove lightbox.linkbolic.com? Please let me know or how I can improve this blog post.
Hello guys and gals. Just a short post on an adware called Primary Result. Found this while reviewing some of the files recently submitted to FreeFixer. This is a BrowseFox variant.
Of the 57 anti-virus scanners at VirusTotal, 23 detected the file. The Primary Result files are detected as Adware.SwiftBrowse.CH by BitDefender, Tool.NetFilter.313 by DrWeb, W64/A-59c9c70a!Eldorado by F-Prot, HS_BROWSEFOX.SM by TrendMicro and HS_BROWSEFOX.SM by TrendMicro-HouseCall.
If you are using FreeFixer to remove Primary Result, just look for files digitally signed by Primary Result.
Do you also have Primary Result on your system? Any idea how it was installed? Please share your story the comments below. Thank you very much!
Did you just get a pop-up from hotchatdate.com and wonder where it came from? Did the hotchatdate.com ad appear to have been launched from a web site that under normal circumstances don’t use advertising such as pop-up windows? Or did the hotchatdate.com pop-up show up while you clicked a link on one of the big search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo?
Here’s how the hotchatdate.com pop-up looked like when I got it on my computer:
Does this sound like your experience, you most likely have some adware installed on your system that pops up the hotchatdate.com ads. So there’s no use contacting the site owner. The advertisements are not coming from them. I’ll try help you to remove the hotchatdate.com pop-ups in this blog post. To do this, we need to remove all the adware from your machine.
I found the hotchatdate.com pop-up on one of the lab machines where I have some adware running. I’ve talked about this in some of the previous blog posts. The adware was installed on purpose, and from time to time I check if anything new has appeared, such as pop-up windows, new tabs in the browsers, injected ads on website that usually don’t show ads, or if some new files have been saved to the hard-drive.
hotchatdate.com was registered on 2014-05-05. hotchatdate.com resolves to the 94.199.251.101 IP address and the domain is protected by Domains By Proxy LLC.
So, how do you remove the hotchatdate.com pop-up ads? On the machine where I got the hotchatdate.com ads I had TinyWallet, BlockAndSurf and TinyWallet installed. I removed them with FreeFixer and that stopped the hotchatdate.com pop-ups and all the other ads I was getting in Mozilla Firefox.
Judging from Alexa’s traffic rank, hotchatdate.com is getting quite a lot of traffic:
The issue with pop-ups like the one described in this blog post is that it can be initiated by many variants of adware, not just the adware on my computer. This makes it impossible to say exactly what you need to remove to stop the pop-ups.
So, what can be done? To remove the hotchatdate.com pop-up ads you need to review your machine for adware or other types of unwanted software and uninstall it. Here’s my suggested removal procedure:
What software do you have installed if you look in the Add/Remove programs dialog in the Windows Control Panel? Something that you don’t remember installing yourself or that was recently installed?
You can also review the add-ons you installed in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. Same thing here, do you see something that you don’t remember installing?
If that did not help, I’d recommend a scan with FreeFixer to manually track down the adware. FreeFixer is a freeware tool that I’m working on that scans your computer at lots of locations, such as browser add-ons, processes, Windows services, recently modified files, etc. If you want to get additional details about a file in the scan result, you can click the More Info link for that file and a web page will open up with a VirusTotal report which will be very useful to determine if the file is safe or malware:
An example of FreeFixer’s “More Info” links. Click for full size.
Here’s a video guide showing how to remove pop-up ads with FreeFixer:
Are you a Mac or Linux user and get the hotchatdate.com pop-ups? What did you do to stop the pop-up in your browser? Please share in the comments below. Thanks!
Did you find any adware on your machine? Did that stop the hotchatdate.com ads? Please post the name of the adware you uninstalled from your machine in the comment below.
