Google Redirect Virus

[road2ruin]

Hello Fellow Pistonheaders,
I have picked up somehow a virus or piece of malware that redirects your google searches to obscure websites. What happens is you do a search in google, it gives you your results you click on one to see it but it send you somewhere else, this only happens on google any other search page is fine. Eventually after several clicks it will send you to the page you want. I have done the usual internet searches but info on this is scant to say the least and most of the fixes are rather too specific to be used on my machine. I have done all the usual scans virus/spyware using about 4 different spyware progs and three virus progs and none of them pick anything up.

Anyone help on this or know where I can find a resolution?

Thanks
Peter

[percy flage]

Try asking Google?

[Don]

Have you tried installing a different browser? Or even re-installing the one you have?

Restore a backup from when the box last worked?

[ginettag27]

To try and help, I had a quick search...

Came across this, which seems informative and helpful.

www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1288784&page=1

I haven't come across a Google redirect problem before.. It would help if you could
try and provide _any_ information which might identify which malware you have... Either
through common symptoms, pages or words used or processes running...

I've got AVG (free) up-to-date and also ZoneAlarm (free) installed..

I periodically run Spybot Search and Destroy or Adaware SE to check as well..

I can also recommend stinger, which is free.

HTH!

[Don]

Very interesting link to Tek-tips there...

Somewhat complex removal process by the looks of things. You should probably do it.

Tips for the future:

Run a hardware firewall/router using NAT to access the net: not some modem.
Crank up the security on the web-browser.
Use an anti-virus/security suite like Bulldog/McAfee/Symantec - they do an add-in for Firefox that scans links on pages and warns you if any of them go places rated as "bad" for malware and so on.
Sweep your mail using a security suite.
Change to an ISP that sweeps mail for you as well.

[tigger1]

Is this just in internet explorer? As a first step, try it in firefox - and browse from there for help.

Any old system restore points you could use?

[road2ruin]

Thanks guys
Have looked into a number of those possible cures and yes using another browser will stop it happening so its just an IE problem. It doesnt appear to cause any other problems but it is annoying and I hate being beaten by these things. I will try and uninstall IE tonight and re-install it to see if that makes any difference.

Peter

[flossythepig]

I had this problem recently and it took quite a while searching for different things on Google before I found any reference to the problem.

The way I solved the problem was to run the free AVG Anti-Spyware and Adaware in safemode on my PC

It was during this exercise I discovered that AVG have Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and Anti-Rootkit utilities.

[Onz]

I had this yesterday...any searches with google and yahoo would work but when clicking on any of the results I'd get redirected...I did a full system scan (Norton Internet Security), a Adaware full scan, a Spybot search and destroy scan and a windows defender scan...Adaware found a few things as did spybot so deleted all them and then cleared everything in IE (Temporary Internet Files, Cookies, History etc) and restarted the computer and all was ok again.

HTH

[Onz]

Argghh...it's back and I can't get rid of it...anyone got any bright ideas?

[David Godfrey]

did you try resetting your IE settings, you don't specify which version of ie your runing but for IE7 you would do:
start / settings / control panel
internet options
advanced tab / reset
this should re-set most IE settings back to defaults...

[Saabyfox]

Google "Hijackthis"- it has a utility to see all settings inside Internet explorer( and inside the registry) that have been modified since install. Quiet useful for picking up Browser hijeck objects etc.

[philthy]

I removed this one recently, and am having trouble remembering the name of it.
Open your history tab, and there will be an IP address at the very top of it. This is the landing page of this adware, which then redirects you to whatever it was you searched for.
Google that ip address, and it will throw up the sites I found to deal with it.
I'll keep looking......


Edit to add:
I knew it was "ware" something. Google search results to deal with it here:
www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Wareout&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

This is the page I downloaded the removal tool from:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthre

Good luck.

Edited by philthy on Sunday 20th May 07:58