Key-find.com

Posted: March 20, 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.

Ranking:	6,082
Threat Level:	5/10
Infected PCs:	16,371

First Seen:	March 20, 2014
Last Seen:	October 3, 2023
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

Key-Find.com is a search site that reroutes traffic to the Yahoo's search engine. Although such a minor misrepresentation of the site's purpose is no crime, malware researchers were unhappy to link the promotion of Key-Find.com to attacks made by browser hijacks that may change your Web browser automatically. Since the corresponding browser issues affect both your browser's potential performance and its overall Web safety, contact with Key-Find.com should be kept to a minimum, and removing Key-Find.com hijackers, when needed, should use appropriate system-scanning utilities.

The Uncertain Browsers Benefits Opened Up by Key-Find.com

Key-Find.com is a 'search' site without any actual Web-searching functions; visitors attempting to use this apparent feature may find themselves redirected to Yahoo Search with additional advertisements inserted by Key-Find.com. A recent campaign of browser-hijackings supports this attempt to cash-in on its traffic; a campaign that malware researchers found rising in incidents in the summer of 2014. Symptoms of typical browser hijacks may include:

Hijacked homepages may be set to load Key-Find.com, irrespective of your original settings.
Web browsers may fail to respond to future changes in your homepage, search engine, default new tab or other settings.
Shortcuts for unrelated programs or websites may launch Key-Find.com instead of their original targets, or in addition to them.

A small number of PC security companies also have classified Key-Find.com as a corrupted website. However, malware experts have failed to find any unsafe content on Key-Find.com – although that fact doesn't make visiting Key-Find.com a good idea.

Key-Find.com hijackers avoid displaying components that would let their users remove them or disable them easily, and effectively are tantamount to low-level threats. Universally, Key-Find.com hijackers also are installed automatically, which may indicate that other threats also have an interest in promoting Key-Find.com.

The Key to Ditching a Key-Find.com Homepage

Besides being one of the most basic ways to deceive PC users into funneling traffic, and therefore profit, to its administrators, Key-Find.com has little unique about Key-Find.com. Chrome users seem to be especially vulnerable to Key-Find.com hijacks, which may indicate that the responsible software was copy-pasted from a similarly Chrome-exclusive program in the past. Regardless of that fact, any PC user who sees their browser loading Key-Find.com automatically should run a scan on their computer with appropriate PC security solutions.

Typical reactions to browser-redirecting PUPs like Key-Find.com's hijackers are to reset your browser's settings, reinstall the Web browser or just switch to a different browser. In all cases, these solutions may skirt the symptoms of a Key-Find.com hijacker without removing the related program from your computer. Over time, the security issues of allowing Potentially Unwanted Programs to linger on your hard drive may turn into problems related to other PC threats, and malware experts see every reason to recommend the most comprehensive security tools available for deleting any similarly untrustworthy software.

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:

amt_key-find.exe

File name: amt_key-find.exe
Size: 886.25 KB (886256 bytes)
MD5: 6c190850765af53361a8e08f814767d6
Detection count: 67
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file
Last Updated: August 17, 2022

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

File name without pathhttp_www.key-find.com_0.localstoragehttp_www.key-find.com_0.localstorage-journalHKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}SOFTWARE\key-findSoftwareSoftware\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStorage\key-find.comSoftware\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStorage\www.key-find.comSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\key-findSoftwareHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\[APPLICATION]\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall..{Uninstaller}key-find uninstall

Additional Information

The following directories were created:

%APPDATA%\key-find

The following URL's were detected: