Home Malware Programs Browser Hijackers Loadstart.biz

Loadstart.biz

Posted: June 12, 2017

Threat Metric

Threat Level: 5/10
Infected PCs: 234
First Seen: October 5, 2016
Last Seen: November 26, 2022
OS(es) Affected: Windows

The domain Loadstart.biz leads users to a search engine that is very similar to the one seen on Google.com. However, it lacks the Google logo and also features a collection of bookmarks to popular websites, which can be found beneath the search field. In the upper right corner, users will see quick links to the Google Images, Gmail, YouTube and Facebook. Altogether, there does not appear to be any suspicious content hosted on the landing page, but some users might not be happy with Loadstart.biz due to other reasons. Research shows that this page is linked to browser hijacking software whose installation might modify the default system Web browser's settings so that it will refer users to Loadstart.biz whenever they attempt to load a new tab page or access their homepage. This change is certainly not threatening, but most users are likely to be annoyed by the fact that an unknown application is forcing them to use a 3rd-party search engine.

Using the search field found on Loadstart.biz yields results from Google.com so that at this point and time, we could say that using Loadstart.biz would not expose users to fraudulent search results. However, please do note that the way Loadstart.biz works may change at any time, and its safe status is not permanent.

Our advice to people whose Web browsers redirect them to Loadstart.biz against their will is to consider running an anti-malware scanner, which should identify and remove the hijacker responsible for the issue. In some cases, removing the hijacker might not revert the changes made to the settings so that users might need to replace Loadstart.biz with their favorite new tab page and homepage manually.

Technical Details

Additional Information

The following URL's were detected:
//loadstart.net
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