{"id":1223,"date":"2010-03-20T11:39:32","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T01:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/?p=1223"},"modified":"2010-09-23T12:58:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T02:58:28","slug":"my-browser-was-hijacked%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/?p=1223","title":{"rendered":"My Browser was hijacked\u2026."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I lost 5 precious work hours. The first 3 struggling to find a cause why I suddenly couldn\u2019t access Google, rebooting my system a few times, recycling the modem &#8211; nothing. Was Google down?\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<!--more--><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was strange; I could bring up client\u2019s sites and our Bonza sites but could not search on Google. All I got was <strong>Page not Found<\/strong> when I searched. Firefox was doing the same. Curiously Bing (MSN) was working.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Finally, I called in a Bonza technician. Two hours later I was back in business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>If you thought Pop-ups were annoying, just wait until your web browser is hijacked!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Adware parasite I had is called <em>CoolWebSearch (or <\/em>abbreviated CWS) a well-known spyware program that installs itself on Microsoft Windows and first appeared way back in May 2003!\u00a0 Bugger, they never go away!<\/p>\n<p>A browser Hijacker seeks to exploit security holes within Internet Explorer to install automatically without any user interaction at all. &#8220;All the installation is done silently, in the background\u201d. The malicious software changes your I.E. settings among other things.<\/p>\n<p>You can protect yourself against the malicious software installs by making sure your version of Internet Explorer is up-to-date with all current patches.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">\u201cAha! You work in IT and don\u2019t maintain your \u2018puter!\u201d<\/span> <\/strong>You say.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have the latest and greatest ESET spyware, antivirus, malware software installed in my system.\u00a0I<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"> <strong>never<\/strong><\/span> miss installing software updates and patches.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cA browser Hijacker may disallow access to certain web pages and have been known to disable Antivirus and anti-spyware software<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>How did I get this parasite? I don\u2019t know!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Some versions of CoolWebSearch can be installed through drive-by installation, in which a computer browsing a webpage automatically installs CWS. CWS itself attempts to evade others by not labelling its ads, not providing an EULA, not providing any data about itself and not having a website. Certain variants insert links on random text, leading to advertiser websites. Other attempts to access websites are redirected to pay-per-click search engines that may install more malware display ads. Some variants of CWS also add links to pornography and gambling sites to the user&#8217;s Desktop, Internet Explorer&#8217;s bookmarks and history. Certain versions attempt to edit users&#8217; trusted sites and modify security settings as well as to hide from removal programs<\/em>. (Source Wikipedia)<em><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Browser hijacking is one of the web&#8217;s constant dangers. Whether it arrives in the form of a flood of annoying pop-ups, or malicious code taking over your browser completely, chances are that every Internet user will be subjected to this scourge in some form.<em><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I lost 5 precious work hours. The first 3 struggling to find a cause why I suddenly couldn\u2019t access Google, rebooting my system a few times, recycling the modem &#8211; nothing. Was Google down?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[373],"tags":[176,174,175],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1223"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2639,"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bonzamobilecomputerrepairs.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}