Search.conduit.com

[Tgo01]

Anyone ever heard of this virus/malware/program/whatever the hell it is?

My mom's homepage was set to google but about a week ago the address bar showed up as "search.conduit.com" but it said "Bing" on the actual webpage.

I ran a virus scanner and a couple of different malware scanners and none of them found anything. I googled it and most sites were full of people screaming it was a virus and it was hijacking their home page and wouldn't let them change it and others were saying it steals personal information and credit card numbers. The thing is it let me change the home page back to google with no problems. A couple of sites says it's not really a virus but a search engine that uses underhanded means to get onto your computer without your knowledge.

The only thing I can think of is a couple of years ago when my mom first got the computer I downloaded Zonealarm (never again, especially now) before I realized that Zonealarm is pretty much an outdated program nowadays. I deleted it shortly after that. However during my google searches I found out that this search.conduit.com installs on your computer when you install Zonealarm. However as I said that was a couple of years ago, why would this program suddenly change her home page? The toolbar that Zonealarm installs which contains search.conduit.com was still on her Firefox browser and I deleted it.

My mom does a lot of internet banking and stuff on her computer, I hope none of her information was compromised.

Edit: Oh yeah, a lot of the forums I visited while researching this thing had a post from someone who obviously works for this company that said something like "Don't worry! This program is totally safe! We provide work to over 260,000 companies and are trusted by millions of users!" Was kind of funny to see the exact same message everywhere I went.

[Tgo01]

Search.conduit.com 04-26-2012 12:22 AM tell your mom to stop wanking to internet porn. :welcome:

Oh YOU!

I did go through her browser history, NOT because I suspected she was checking out porn (and she wasn't!) but because I wanted to see if I could pinpoint exactly where she got the virus/whatever from. As far as I can tell search.conduit.com just randomly started appearing in her browser history. Before the very first instance of the address in her browser history she was visiting sites that as far as I can tell are legitimate (like her bank websites, credit card websites, google, stuff like that.)

[Allereli]

I've had to write to a number of sites I use for work about corruption (I know they are legit, but when I go something tries to hijack my browser), and they write back saying it is due to some google ads. When something that ubiquitous is corrupted, it makes me wonder how many people are using infected machines.

a couple of solutions I found
http://www.zimbio.com/Spyware/articles/Ojin-fpdWCR/How+Delete+Search+conduit+com+Redirection

http://www.removeonline.com/how-to-remove-search-conduit-com-virus/

[Bhaalizmo]

Malwarebytes is a free application that works great for stuff like this that is shady but not exactly a virus. I believe it would fix this thing for you.

I often download and run Ccleaner first to dump tmp junk and clean up the registry before running Malwarebytes. (the scan will run faster this way) The cleanup routine and registry clean routine are separate functions in the app, just fyi.

[Tgo01]

I tried Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware and neither of them found anything. The thing is it didn't act like the virus that so many other people claimed it was. They were claiming it was slowing down their PCs, every time they did an internet search it would bring them to some random website and sometimes it wouldn't even let them close down their web browser, my moms computer wasn't doing any of those things. Indeed it did behave like a normal search engine.

I think to be on the safe side though I'm going to format her computer, it's been a while since it's been formated anyways.

[WRoss]

Have you tried spybot S&D?

[Jonty]

I've seen conduit crap many times. Just looks like bloatware that installs toolbars to your browsers and makes itself the default search engine. I doubt any malware scanners are going to remove this.

I'd start with looking through your installed programs to uninstall it. You can also either just reset your browser to do a mass removal of add-ins and search engines, or manually remove the add-ins, remove it from the search engines, and set the default search engine to google, or whatever you want.

[subzero]

I tried Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware and neither of them found anything. The thing is it didn't act like the virus that so many other people claimed it was. They were claiming it was slowing down their PCs, every time they did an internet search it would bring them to some random website and sometimes it wouldn't even let them close down their web browser, my moms computer wasn't doing any of those things. Indeed it did behave like a normal search engine.

I think to be on the safe side though I'm going to format her computer, it's been a while since it's been formated anyways.

Not sure exactly how you ran those scans, but boot into safe mode with networking. Download and run rkill, then scan your machine with both MBAM and SAS.

[Dimius]

here is one more instruction on how to remove it: http://removal-guides.com/malware/conduit-search-hijacker/

[Parkbandit]

I've seen conduit crap many times. Just looks like bloatware that installs toolbars to your browsers and makes itself the default search engine. I doubt any malware scanners are going to remove this.

I'd start with looking through your installed programs to uninstall it. You can also either just reset your browser to do a mass removal of add-ins and search engines, or manually remove the add-ins, remove it from the search engines, and set the default search engine to google, or whatever you want.

Exactly this. Control panel, uninstall software.. when the list comes up, sort by "installed on". It usually is in a group of 4-5 other programs for me. Delete all of them and reboot. You will still have to reconfigure your Chrome to stop going to that search engine.. but you should be good after that.

I usually pick that conduit.search thing up when I'm watching UFC fights via the Internet for free. Is your mom into that? Maybe give me her number and we can talk about it...

[Liagala]

I usually pick that conduit.search thing up when I'm watching UFC fights via the Internet for free. Is your mom into that? Maybe give me her number and we can talk about it...
You know you're old when you stop even bothering to hide the fact that you find most PC posters' moms to be the right age for potential hookups.

[Parkbandit]

You know you're old when you stop even bothering to hide the fact that you find most PC posters' moms to be the right age for potential hookups.

You have a dirty, dirty mind, Microwave.