Your-home-page.net

Your-home-page.net is a search site that recently has become a fixture of a browser hijacking campaign, which may subvert your Web-browsing settings to redirect you to this domain automatically. While the latest scans of Your-home-page.net have failed to turn up any threatening content, browsing sites promoted by attacks against your PC may be a security risk. For now, malware experts advise using standard anti-malware tools and strategies to delete Your-home-page.net hijackers, whenever you see symptoms of being forced to visit this site.

The Home Page You didn't Choose for Yourself

Although software add-ons may strive to redirect Web traffic to less than ideal websites, the majority of these 'features' may be accomplished with browser toolbars, extensions and other unwanted but non-threatening programs. However, some of these browser hijackers also may be the byproduct of the installation of threatening software, including Trojans that may conduct other attacks besides changing your browser's settings. As one of the latest examples, Your-home-page.net is a site that's been the focal point of a recent browser hijacking campaign-utilizing Trojans.

While malware researchers still are acquiring information on the threat involved, they can confirm at least one distribution method: bundles with unofficial installers for Minecraft, the Mojang construction game. Compromised PCs had multiple installed browsers hijacked, resulting in homepage redirects to Your-home-page.net. The implementation of these redirects ignored the default settings of each browser in question and avoided installing separate extensions for each browser (one of the common methods of accomplishing a browser hijacking).

Some systems also were affected by additional symptoms unrelated to their Web browsers, including the loss of Windows System Restore points. This modification prevents PC owners simply from reversing the Your-home-page.net hijackings by reverting to a previous 'snapshot' of Windows.

Getting Back Home from Your-home-page.net

Your-home-page.net represents itself as a search site and does no greater harm than redirecting its traffic to Google results. Consequentially, malware experts have found no rationale for categorizing Your-home-page.net as a hostile website. However, even benevolent websites shouldn't be allowed to be locked as non-consensual homepages or search engines. Automatic browser redirects to Your-home-page.net should be treated as potential signs of an infected PC, regardless of the presence or lack of any other symptoms of greater concern than that.

Reinstalling individual Web browsers may suppress some of the symptoms of a Your-home-page.net hijacker, but will not remove Your-home-page.net from your computer. Since the presence of any threat is a security risk, malware experts would recommend the use of anti-malware tools for uninstalling a Your-home-page.net hijacker universally, rather than removing any individual symptoms. Affected brands of browsers may include Internet Explorer and Opera, with any confirmation for other brands (and operating systems besides Windows) still under investigation.

However, PC users who make sure to download games from 'safe' sources, or scan potentially unsafe downloads before launching them, should be protected from all known distribution channels for Your-home-page.net hijackers.