infomaven
2014-07-07, 07:30
I think I might have gotten a corrupted or fake CCCleaner installer.
As many of you probably know, CCCleaner updates their versions frequently (kind of annoying, but also comforting when you consider the software is free).
Usually I go directly to piriform.com to get the download, but this time, I think I went somewhere else.
When first launched, everything started out normal, but then I started seeing a bunch of extra programs coming up for installation that I had never heard of.
I immediately declined a couple, but a few got installed on my computer. I tried to uninstall them, but I don't think they really got removed, because things have not been the same since then.
My default search engine got changed to something based on bing.com.
When I click a link on a webpage, I'm never sure if it will actually go to the requested page, or some other page that is trying to sell me PC fix products, antivirus or video downloaders.
This was initially happening just with Internet Explorer, but now happens with Chrome as well.
It seems to be a random selection of pages that are probably valid products in themselves, but not valid for this context, because I did not ask for them.
There are also a couple of injected images that seem to be following me around to different websites (even this one) -- see screenshot labelled *areTheseSupposedToBePresent_spybotForum*
I will attach a few screenshots of pages that have come up. Sometimes they come up as an extra tab, but other times, they take over the browsing session and crash the browser.
ATTEMPTED FIXES:
I ran Spybot as admin. The UPDATE script failed.
I ran the program in its current state, and it found something called *iCrossRun*. I removed it, but it keeps coming back.
As many of you probably know, CCCleaner updates their versions frequently (kind of annoying, but also comforting when you consider the software is free).
Usually I go directly to piriform.com to get the download, but this time, I think I went somewhere else.
When first launched, everything started out normal, but then I started seeing a bunch of extra programs coming up for installation that I had never heard of.
I immediately declined a couple, but a few got installed on my computer. I tried to uninstall them, but I don't think they really got removed, because things have not been the same since then.
My default search engine got changed to something based on bing.com.
When I click a link on a webpage, I'm never sure if it will actually go to the requested page, or some other page that is trying to sell me PC fix products, antivirus or video downloaders.
This was initially happening just with Internet Explorer, but now happens with Chrome as well.
It seems to be a random selection of pages that are probably valid products in themselves, but not valid for this context, because I did not ask for them.
There are also a couple of injected images that seem to be following me around to different websites (even this one) -- see screenshot labelled *areTheseSupposedToBePresent_spybotForum*
I will attach a few screenshots of pages that have come up. Sometimes they come up as an extra tab, but other times, they take over the browsing session and crash the browser.
ATTEMPTED FIXES:
I ran Spybot as admin. The UPDATE script failed.
I ran the program in its current state, and it found something called *iCrossRun*. I removed it, but it keeps coming back.