Home Malware Programs Adware PhishAlert Ads

PhishAlert Ads

Posted: November 3, 2015

Threat Metric

Threat Level: 2/10
Infected PCs: 218
First Seen: October 30, 2015
Last Seen: May 2, 2022
OS(es) Affected: Windows

Nowadays, most of the webpages include commercial materials to generate income. If these ads are not too many, and they offer good products, you may even enjoy this activity. However, if you notice 'Ads by PhishAlert,' it may be a signal for trouble. PhishAlert is adware that may add additional pop-ups, banners and interstitial ads in the sites you open. These new commercial materials may be far more aggressive than the page-based ones. They may follow you consistently during your online sessions. The sponsored links may appear even on sites that are typically ad-free. The pop-ups and banners may occupy a significant part of the screen. Some of them may even overlay essential page buttons. The distraction that these ads may induce may not be the most serious issue. Since the commercial materials may be in vast amounts and some of them may contain multimedia elements, their loading may become a burden to the PC. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer may start loading the sites too slowly, and there may be random freezes or crashes. The biggest reason not to click on the advertising materials by PhishAlert is that their destination is a mystery. They will not take you to large and legitimate shopping platforms as these don't need adware to attract visitors. It is possible the new banners and pop-ups to load totally unknown e-commerce sites that may be unreliable. You also may end up on harmful or fraudulent pages. PhishAlert doesn't have an official page, so we can safely assume users don't download it intentionally. The extension may travel in software bundles. The experts recommend running a system scan to delete the adware immediately.

Technical Details

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

Regexp file mask%WINDIR%\System32\Tasks\ISoftUpdateTaskHKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\PhishalertSOFTWARE\PhishalertSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\PhishalertSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\PhishalertSYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\PhishalertSYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\PhishalertHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\[APPLICATION]\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall..{Uninstaller}Phishalert

Additional Information

The following directories were created:
%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\ISoftUpdate%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Common Files\ISoftUpdate%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Phishalert
Loading...