Highlightly
Posted: December 23, 2013
Threat Metric
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: | 3,410 |
|---|---|
| Threat Level: | 1/10 |
| Infected PCs: | 77,645 |
| First Seen: | December 23, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Last Seen: | October 15, 2023 |
| 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\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: 2bd05beb0f04393b2f3a169cbf59ed91
Detection count: 10,078
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: April 8, 2023
C:\Program Files (x86)\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
File name: HighlightlyClientIE.dllSize: 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
C:\Program Files\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: d19706b73259a0fa8aef5ac1479c6062
Detection count: 258
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: C:\Program Files\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: March 25, 2022
C:\Program Files\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
File name: HighlightlyClientIE.dllSize: 147.56 KB (147560 bytes)
MD5: 73444ad47878977713d886f643f7fc0a
Detection count: 98
File type: Dynamic link library
Mime Type: unknown/dll
Path: C:\Program Files\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: April 26, 2022
C:\Program Files (x86)\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
File name: HighlightlyClientIE.dllSize: 147.56 KB (147560 bytes)
MD5: 6dce6765f8d696796cbb67f61cb3d0ba
Detection count: 75
File type: Dynamic link library
Mime Type: unknown/dll
Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: May 11, 2023
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\n2807\highlightly_1612-b3c8818a.exe
File name: highlightly_1612-b3c8818a.exeSize: 1.17 MB (1175728 bytes)
MD5: 1049f0dace8c7219f87b109e3c81fcf6
Detection count: 54
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: August 17, 2022
%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: bacbe5e68836523bc9e32770b645a631
Detection count: 12
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Highlightly\Service
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: June 2, 2014
%PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: 2789ec7208fe9f7544dd58b9614f4d5e
Detection count: 9
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: February 3, 2014
%PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\IE\HighlightlyClientIE.dll
File name: HighlightlyClientIE.dllSize: 147.56 KB (147560 bytes)
MD5: 1e7a44ef1f8e9235b06d227cf90280b9
Detection count: 7
File type: Dynamic link library
Mime Type: unknown/dll
Path: %PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\IE
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: February 3, 2014
%PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: 627351cc9a7aef8d6922a5e2be68eab3
Detection count: 7
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: April 9, 2014
%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: fc8e654cb649557d972146ab1c8580e9
Detection count: 7
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Highlightly\Service
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: June 2, 2014
%PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service\hlsvc.exe
File name: hlsvc.exeSize: 273 KB (273000 bytes)
MD5: 8b56756d611720d1a7f27086abf70ac3
Detection count: 5
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Path: %PROGRAMFILES%\Highlightly\Service
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: February 3, 2014
Registry Modifications
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
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