Highlightly

Posted: December 23, 2013

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:	5,401
Threat Level:	1/10
Infected PCs:	78,851

First Seen:	December 23, 2013
Last Seen:	March 8, 2025
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

Highlightly is a Potentially Unwanted Program and adware product that provides 'free' search services in return for loading a wide range of different advertisements into your Web browser. Although Highlightly shouldn't be mistaken for a threat, like many other PUPs, Highlightly has a very disadvantageous benefit to cost tradeoff, and malware experts see little reason to recommend using its software. Removing Highlightly should result in a safer and overall more optimized Web browser, as long as you do so appropriately with security products that are competent at uninstalling browser toolbar-based PUPs.

The Low Shine on the Highlights of Highlightly

Highlightly is a PUP that thinks highly of itself, with marketing that's happy to explain that Highlightly provides advantages for searching the Web and translating text. Unlike alternative services that provide these features at no extra cost, Highlightly claims that these features warrant its modifying your browser to host advertisements. Malware researchers can speak for the fact that these advertisements may include:

Text-based linked advertisements.
Injected banners.
E-coupons and price comparisons.
Pop-under and pop-up advertising windows.

Some of these advertisements may modify unrelated Web pages to be hosted, although Highlightly claims to mark all of its advertisements so that they can be identified. However, while Highlightly enacts its advertisements in a manner less dishonest than that of most adware products, Highlightly does continue to provide advertisements in ways that aren't beneficial to you while also giving you supposed features that actually aren't especially remarkable.

Dousing the Light of this High-Flying Adware

Highlightly is far from the worst adware noted by malware researchers, but Highlightly still is more of a disadvantage to have installed on your Web browser than anything else. Since Highlightly's features may be found from other, non-advertisement-based services without much difficulty, you generally should consider deleting Highlightly as the best thing for your browser. As an added incentive to this general recommendation, you also may want to consider that malware researchers often find PC threats being delivered through adware-based advertisements like Highlightly's advertisements, although not on purpose (in most cases).

Highlightly may affect more than one browser, and uninstalling Highlightly does not necessarily remove all of the browser changes that have been made by Highlightly in the meantime. Removing Highlightly with dependable anti-adware software can give you the best chance of getting your browser back to surfing the Web without advertisements being shown at sites that have nothing to do with them.

Highlightly does have an independent website, but such sites usually are secondary distribution methods for adware. More often, getting Highlightly installed by accident is more a matter of installing software from a general-purpose downloading site, via multiple program-bundling installers. If you do feel the need to visit these types of websites, these installers can be detected by the same security products that can delete Highlightly.

Technical Details

File System Modifications

Tutorials: If you wish to learn how to remove malware components manually, you can read the tutorials on how to find malware, kill unwanted processes, remove malicious DLLs and delete other harmful files. Always be sure to back up your PC before making any changes.

The following files were created in the system:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll

File name: HighlightlyClientIE.dll
Size: 147.56 KB (147560 bytes)
MD5: b59634cf7f26949e96c2c7d14c793cc8
Detection count: 679
File type: Dynamic link library
Mime Type: unknown/dll
Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: May 29, 2022

%WINDIR%\system32\drivers\hlnfd.sys

File name: hlnfd.sys
Size: 58.25 KB (58256 bytes)
MD5: 8decf397b091ff0af81cc48c601c6b94
Detection count: 185
File type: System file
Mime Type: unknown/sys
Path: %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\hlnfd.sys
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: July 19, 2024

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\n2807\highlightly_1612-b3c8818a.exe

File name: highlightly_1612-b3c8818a.exe
Size: 1.17 MB (1175728 bytes)
MD5: 1049f0dace8c7219f87b109e3c81fcf6
Detection count: 56
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\n2807\highlightly_1612-b3c8818a.exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: September 25, 2024

%PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe

File name: hlsvc.exe
Size: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: 80ec3d63b3688282c23fc9254145b230
Detection count: 5
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: June 2, 2014

More files

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

CLSID{483F56D2-1D67-44A5-A4C5-67DBB724F7A0}{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}{EA3802D2-C00A-4478-9319-34075A31C28F}Regexp file mask%WinDir%\System32\drivers\hlnfd.sysHKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}SOFTWARE\HighlightlySoftware\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Approved Extensions\{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\PreApproved\{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Stats\{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\HighlightlySOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\PreApproved\{83F2328D-0D6A-42B4-B0C4-02A929EDD4BE}SYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\hlnfdSYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\hlsvcSYSTEM\ControlSet002\services\hlnfdSYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\hlnfdSYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\hlsvcHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\[APPLICATION]\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall..{Uninstaller}Highlightly

Additional Information

The following directories were created:

%PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Highlightly

The following URL's were detected:

gethighlightly.com