Adware.Play Now Radio

Posted: February 28, 2014

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:

Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.

Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.

Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.

Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.

% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.

Ranking:	12,366
Threat Level:	2/10
Infected PCs:	2,269

First Seen:	February 28, 2014
Last Seen:	October 13, 2023
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

The 'Play Now Radio' pop-up or Adware.Play Now Radio is a symptom associated with adware and related PUPs that may accompany it. Although its advertisements shouldn't be especially harmful to your Web browser, the 'Play Now Radio' pop-up does have a tendency to result from installations of adware that are more difficult to remove than malware experts would consider being safe. If you have any misgivings about Play Now Radio or simply would like to be rid of your 'Play Now Radio' pop-ups, system scans from your dedicated anti-adware and/or anti-malware suites should be a permanent solution to getting your browser's behavior back to the usual.

A Radio Playing Advertisements You Don't Want

The 'Play Now Radio' pop-up is a small piece of an adware campaign that has been in particularly prominent distribution as of February this year. So far, malware researchers only have observed the 'Play Now Radio' pop-up issues in Mozilla's Firefox browser, though most Web browsers are vulnerable to similar kinds of advertising add-ons. The 'Play Now Radio' pop-ups are particularly noted for ignoring advertisement-blockers, script-blockers and other add-ons whose explicit purpose is to disable software like Play Now Radio.

Obviously, the 'Play Now Radio' pop-ups will not appear before you install the Play Now Radio add-on, but malware researchers found that this can occur more easily than you'd think. Installation methods for software related to the 'Play Now Radio' pop-up often include freeware-bundling packages that may install Play Now Radio along with other, presumably more desirable software than adware. Avoiding general download sites, software piracy links and other sources known for distributing adware is one of the first steps malware researchers would encourage in avoiding an encounter with a 'Play Now Radio' pop-up.

Changing the Tune that Plays Itself on Your Browser

Rather than being what's casually called an 'audio advertisements virus,' the 'Play Now Radio' pop-up is based off of adware that uses non-audio advertising. However, while its functions are a little less intrusive than one would fear, Play Now Radio does deliberately circumvent multiple security add-ons. Even without those traits, malware researchers would consider the 'Play Now Radio' pop-up to be a suspicious, and potentially threatening symptom, due to the difficulty of removing its associated software.

Fortunately, even though a 'Play Now Radio' pop-up's adware will refuse to be uninstalled through both your Windows Control Panel and Firefox's add-on manager, a variety of anti-malware and anti-adware programs are designed for detecting and removing obstinate advertising software. Since unwanted advertising may turn into sources of phishing attacks and other security problems, malware researchers suggest the use of such software whenever you encounter repeated issues with a 'Play Now Radio' pop-up or other advertising pop-up.

Aliases

Generic Malware [Panda]Trojan.SuspectCRC [Ikarus]BehavesLike.Win32.Dropper.fh [McAfee-GW-Edition]Generic PUA MH [Sophos]Win32:Dropper-gen [Drp] [Avast]Adware.BL [Symantec]RDN/Generic PUP.x!cg3 [McAfee]Skodna.Generic_r.HU [AVG]

Technical Details

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

HKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}Software\Classes\paybyadsSoftware\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\playnowradioHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\[APPLICATION]\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall..{Uninstaller}playnowradio

Additional Information

The following directories were created:

%APPDATA%\playnowradio%LOCALAPPDATA%\playnowradio%LOCALAPPDATA%\playnowradio.com