CocoChaos

Posted: March 19, 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.

Threat Level:	2/10
Infected PCs:	59

First Seen:	March 24, 2014
Last Seen:	May 10, 2019
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

CocoChaos is a Potentially Unwanted Program which provides shopping-themed advertisements for your Web browser. Since these advertisements may cause a range of security issues, and since CocoChaos makes additional changes to your browser that aren't necessarily beneficial to its performance, deleting CocoChaos with a strong anti-adware product tends to be the response suggested by malware researchers. Until they're removed, CocoChaos advertisements may cause poor browser performance, harm your online content accessibility or expose you to potentially untrustworthy advertising affiliates.

The Add-On that Makes Your Browser Go Coco

CocoChaos is a PUP with no real purposes other than getting cheap advertising profits. Although CocoChaos' website is slim on describing its features, a careful perusal of its legal disclaimers will reveal that CocoChaos may update itself automatically (which malware researchers rate as a security risk), display browser advertisements in a variety of invasive formats and initiate basic monitoring of your Web-browsing habits. CocoChaos may have been confirmed for compatibility with Firefox and Internet Explorer, though there are no hard barriers preventing CocoChaos from being equally viable for other brands of browsers.

The advertising functions displayed by CocoChaos, which may superimpose themselves between you and a loaded website, add extra search results or launch pop-ups, may cause browser slowdowns or other performance problems. Most importantly, malware experts consider them security risks, like all advertisements that can't be disabled easily and inject themselves into other Web pages automatically.

CocoChaos also has one final trick up its sleeve, proving its poor intentions: its refusal to allow normal uninstallation procedures to take place. By itself, this characteristic isn't sufficient for classifying CocoChaos as threatening, but malware researchers never have seen a case of a legitimate, benign browser add-on that refuse to allow itself to be removed easily.

Bringing Order to CocoChaos

Because of its limited advantages and rather substantial disadvantages, including changes to your Web-browsing settings, CocoChaos isn't recommended as a permanent fixture of your Web browser. Despite not being a threat, CocoChaos should be detectable as adware by most anti-malware and anti-adware utilities, which can delete CocoChaos during any thorough system scan. Because of its potential for updating itself, CocoChaos may be difficult to delete unless your system-scanning software also is working with updated threat databases, which allow it to detect the latest unwanted and threatening applications with optimal accuracy.

CocoChaos showcases how a product can be marketed positively without being able to verify its own claims, but malware researchers primarily are concerned with PC users installing CocoChaos through bundles. Software bundles that include multiple programs for installation are the top means by which CocoChaos and other adware extensions are distributed. However, if you avoid unsafe sites habitually, use strong browser settings and scan any suspicious files before opening them, you may be able to catch CocoChaos before CocoChaos can unleash its particular brand of chaos on your browser.

Technical Details

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

HKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Approved Extensions\{85199c75-aefc-40b8-8cbb-4558173b0764}

Additional Information

The following directories were created:

%PROGRAMFILES%\CocoChaos%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\CocoChaos