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Search Expanse Ads

Posted: May 10, 2016

Threat Metric

Ranking: 17,290
Threat Level: 5/10
Infected PCs: 623
First Seen: May 10, 2016
Last Seen: September 3, 2023
OS(es) Affected: Windows

The Search Expanse is not a Web extension that can optimize your searches. The Search Expanse is simple adware, which has been designed to redirect PC users towards third-party domains. Instead of improving your searching experience, the Search Expanse may worsen it. This questionable application may modify results. The Search Expanse may show many sponsored links at the front pages. Most of them may lack a typical label, which states they are ads. This way, you may get transferred towards affiliated sites without even suspecting. The main issues with this performance are two. First and most important, some of the sponsored platforms may be threatening. The developers of Search Expanse may not check their partners properly before including them in the list of sponsored domains. Also, pages that were completely safe initially may start spreading harmful software later on. While Search Expanse is present in your system, it will not be safe to download any new application from visited sites. Even seemingly innocent updates for Java or Adobe may trigger an infection. The second issue that the Search Expanse adware may cause is not related to the security of your system directly. It concerns the time that you will need to find the necessary information. The sponsored links by Search Expanse may make it difficult for you to find the sites that match your terms in the best way. Thus, you may end up on domains that are completely irrelevant to your query. The Search Expanse may not rely solely on your searches to trick you into visiting partners. The Search Expanse also may generate various commercial materials like pop-ups, pop-unders, banners and in-text ads. Some of them may seem to be originating from the currently opened site. The Search Expanse may inject so many discounts and offers that the operating pace of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer may tumble. You should consider using a powerful anti-malware utility to delete the Search Expanse adware.

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\Search Expanse File name: C:\Program Files\Search Expanse
Group: Malware file
C:\Program Files\Search Expanse\uninstaller.exe File name: C:\Program Files\Search Expanse\uninstaller.exe
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file
temp.exe File name: temp.exe
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file
7za.exe File name: 7za.exe
File type: Executable File
Mime Type: unknown/exe
Group: Malware file

Registry Modifications

The following newly produced Registry Values are:

File name without pathsearchexpanse-a.akamaihd[1].xmlHKEY..\..\..\..{RegistryKeys}SOFTWARE\SearchExpanseSOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SearchExpanseSYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\Service Mgr SearchExpanseSYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\Update Mgr SearchExpanseSYSTEM\ControlSet002\services\Service Mgr SearchExpanseSYSTEM\ControlSet002\services\Update Mgr SearchExpanseSYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Service Mgr SearchExpanseSYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Update Mgr SearchExpanseHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\[APPLICATION]\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall..{Uninstaller}Search Expanse

Additional Information

The following directories were created:
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\7cb9339a-906c-4d5e-ad5d-e6147d334ac5%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\7cb9339a-906c-4d5e-ad5d-e6147d334ac5%COMMONPROGRAMFILES(X86)%\7cb9339a-906c-4d5e-ad5d-e6147d334ac5%PROGRAMFILES%\Search Expanse%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Search Expanse%temp%\Search Expanse
The following URL's were detected:
searchexpanse.comwww.searchexpanse.com
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