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Hooot.com

Posted: January 23, 2012

Hooot.com Screenshot 1Hooot.com pretends to offer useful links and a search engine feature, but Hooot.com's actual functions don't serve any purpose except to redirect traffic to sites that pay back money to Hooot.com's web masters. Hooot.com has a history of being associated with browser hijackers.. Browser hijackers for Hooot.com, like most kinds of browser hijackers, are better off removed with suitable anti-malware scanners rather than deleted by manual methods that may leave non-visible components intact on your PC.

Hooot.com – a Far Cry from the Kind of Spice You'd Want in Your Searches

Hooot.com may offer you links to anything from advertisements to sites with no content at all to sites that host malicious content, such as phishing attacks or drive-by-download scripts. However, the foremost threat that arises is browser hijackers are forcing your browser to load Hooot.com on a regular basis. Common side effects from an infection by a browser hijacker can include:

  • Pop-ups that display advertisements or malicious content, including fake warning message, fake scanners or phishing hoaxes.
  • Problems with your web browser's settings. You may be unable to change your settings or you may see them erase your changes after you close and re-launch the browser.
  • Having Hooot.com set to be your homepage, added to your bookmarks or otherwise inserted into your browser's settings in ways that insure constant exposure to Hooot.com whether or not you want it that way.
  • Redirects to Hooot.com or sites that are associated with Hooot.com after you try to load other websites, particularly search engines.

Cooling Down Browser Attacks

If your browser shows any symptoms of being attacked by a browser hijacker, or if you've come into recent contact with Hooot.com, you should clean your computer with a suitable anti-malware program to insure that all PC threats, including browser hijackers, are completely removed.

In addition, browser hijackers are often installed with Trojans or rootkits that are much greater threats than the browser hijacker itself. Common issues that can accompany these PC threats include changed security settings, unusual resource allocation (such as high RAM usage), loss of personal information in spyware attacks and the creation of backdoor vulnerabilities that can grant hackers to gain control of your PC.

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:



%Temp%\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.class File name: %Temp%\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.class
Mime Type: unknown/class
%AppData%\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.exe File name: %AppData%\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.exe
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
%Windows%\system32\DRIVERS\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.sys File name: %Windows%\system32\DRIVERS\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.sys
File type: System file
Mime Type: unknown/sys

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

HKEY..\..\..\..{Subkeys}HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Stats\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search\CustomizeSearch={site_URL}HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\{RANDOM CHARACTERS}.exe
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