Conduit.com.

The BBQ Pit
#1

Hello good people, excuse me if I go orbital.

YOU, the scum behind browser hijacks.
Yes YOU, you blackmailing, energy sucking fuckers.

The conduit.com company who’s company site and realty I’m sure you can find and if…

I advise others on Internet security and I’ve now had a ‘drive by’ courtesy of Conduit .com.

Yes I know that I’m mentioning the Co. a lot, hopefully some one will manage to avoid them.

As an addendum, before you ask, I’m running a ‘clean’ and fully updated version of Win XP, Chrome + Firefox. Thoroughly scanned and I was testing this rig prior to donating it to the Danish Church in London, a little responsibility.

So Conduit.com, come out of the woods cos I can smell class action in the air.

Peter

#2

A few times, I’ve had to go through someone’s registry, to search-and-destroy all “conduit” references.

#3

What is the site? I’ve been doing a lot of electrical and air work lately. I take it they’re not in the business of selling me conduit?

And why, when hearing about a nefarious site, do I get that same feeling when looking over the edge of a cliff. No, not gonna jump. Clearly. But maybe if I use the virtual Linux machine’s FireFox/NoScript/AdBlock/Ghostery…

#4

Conduit’s a web platform. They have a toolbar program that’s insiduous, likes to install itself with other software, and is hard to remove.

#5

Ah ha. Who actually uses custom toolbars?

This is why when my in-laws vist (in-laws from Russia, who visit plenty of .ru sites) I start their very own virtual machine on all the public computers, maximize it, then start up Firefox in full screen mode.

#6

I have this problem, too. Multiple scans with anti-malware programs later, and I still have this shit on my computer.

Aside from a clean re-install, how do you get rid of this scourge?

#7

yeah… my son got his computer infected with this shit because he goes to dumb sites and downloads dumb things.

If anyone has some good instructions on cleaning this out, I would be forever grateful.

#8

Especially if I can stop them from trying to force me to do Conduit searches instead of Google.

Regards,
Shodan

#9

Haven’t tried it myself, but…

#10

Damn, that article is painfully bad in the way it’s written.

#11

About the recommended “use uninstall in the control panel” it should be indeed the first thing to try, although I call them scum-ware, to avoid run ins with the law they usually do a job of uninstalling themselves. One selects the choice in the “Program and Features” to uninstall or change a program area in the control panel.

Then, if there are still problems, run a program like https://www.malwarebytes.org/ and http://www.superantispyware.com/ both available in free versions.

One way to prevent this in the future, make a habit of making profiles for family members, anyone that has to do a lot of surfing should have a simple profile with no administrator permissions. Then to clean the computer is only a mater of saving the documents and then deleting the affected profile.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-user-account#create-user-account=windows-8

#12

Hitman Pro will remove it. I also like AdwCleanerand JunkwareRemovalTool for general crapware removal.

#13

Wow. Yeah it is… I didn’t read the whole thing, just kinda glanced at it and it looked OK.

Sorry!

#14

I’m very curious about this drive-by download concept and have been trying to find it “in the wild”. So is conduit.com able to infect a browser just by being visited? I tried going there and clicked around but nothing happened. Is there a particular browser that is vulnerable to this site, or is there a particular link on the site that causes the infection?

#15

Protip: some places routinely bundle these spy/malware into their installers (cnet/download.com), so only use reputable sources (filehippo.com). Also never “speed-click” your way through the installation process (read carefully and click “custom install” to weed out obvious spyware components).

#16

And whatever you do, never click on the giant green “DOWNLOAD” button!

#17

ninite.com is also safe/sound and reputable.

#18

When I highlight and right-click a term in IE, I would like to make the option “Search with Google”, NOT “Search with Bing” and especially not “Search with Conduit Search”. Is there a way to change that? Windows Help is as useless as ever.

Regards,
Shodan

#19
  1. go here
  2. Click on google
  3. Click the “Add to Internet Explorer” button
  4. Make sure you check the “set as default search” box
  5. Donate $5 to SPLC :slight_smile:
  6. Consider switching to chrome.
#20

You find a board like majorgeeks.com or malwaretips.com that has experts who will help you for free. There are several of them. They will usually ask you to download software like “Hijack This” that will produce a log showing info about your system and post it for them to see. Then they’ll give you solutions to try. (Then you donate a few bucks to the board if you’re not a jerk).

That’s how I got rid of some nasty malware (the “about:blank” virus: http://malwaretips.com/threads/about-blank-virus.16086/) some years ago.

Geeks can be very nice people.