PDFster
Posted: November 27, 2017
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: | 14,972 |
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Threat Level: | 8/10 |
Infected PCs: | 5,441 |
First Seen: | January 28, 2022 |
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Last Seen: | March 10, 2025 |
OS(es) Affected: | Windows |
PDFster is a potentially unwanted browser extension by Tersertude Ltd that affects the Chrome browser and other versions based on the Chromium platform. PDFster has its own domain located at thepdfster.com, which contains a link to the extension’s page on the Google Chrome Web store. While PDFster claims to offer a specialized search engine that only searches the Web for PDF files, in reality, PDFster has a very little functionality. Once the extension is installed in Chrome, the users get a new button in their top menu bar. Clicking on it brings up a new search box. Using this new search engine simply redirects the search through search.yahoo.com and brings up the same results page you would get in the Yahoo Search, only with a modified URL.
The results do not include any PDF files, as the extension suggests and PDFster does not include specialized PDF search functionality, which puts it in the gray area of Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs). There is no way to know for sure how your search queries are treated, whether they are stored by the people who run PDFster and whether this information is sold to any third parties or not. The simple fact that the program has none of the functionality it claims to have is already a pretty big red flag. Thankfully, PDFster does appear in the Chrome extension menu and can be removed from there even manually. Users also should take note that PDFster also might come bundled with other software, in what is called software bundle installers.
PDFster is very likely an offshoot of the PDF Baron – another potentially unwanted browser extension distributed by Tersertude Ltd, which we have covered previously.
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