malware is affecting Firefox Home Page preferences and settings
Hello,
Every time I open Firefox, I see that the homepage is changed from "https://www.google.com/" to "http://internetportalne.ws/search.php?q=?l=ar".
I went to: Options >> General, and changed to Home page from "http://internetportalne.ws/search.php?q=?l=ar" to "https://www.google.com/". While at least one window of Firefox is open, every new window I open, I see that the home page is Google, as I wanted, however, when I close all Firefox windows and open Firefox again, I see that the home page is changed to that weird link, "http://internetportalne.ws/search.php?q=?l=ar".
Please see the attached screenshot.
I followed the steps of the "Clean Reinstall" that is recommended but the issue is still there. I am sure there is a nasty malware affecting Firefox on my computer. Can anyone help me solve this issue?
Thank you for the help.
Sulaiman Alsuhaimi
All Replies (3)
Hi ! 'Internetportalne.ws' is a browser hijacker.
Go to the 3-bar menu => Addons => and look for any unfamiliar or suspicious looking extensions, like e.g.:
SafeSearch Incognito SearchAssist Incognito
When you do find any : remove them.
Then, let's run malware scans :
Further information can be found in this article :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware?cache=no
Run most or all of the listed malware scanners.
They all work differently - what one program doesn't pick up, the others might.
Well said, Happy.
Note that your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts. The user.js file will only be present if you or other software has created this file and normally won't be present.
You can check its content with a text editor (right-click: "Open with"; do not double-click). The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.
You can delete the user.js file if you didn't create this file yourself.
You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.
- Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory:
Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
You can check the target line in the Firefox desktop shortcut (right-click: Properties) to make sure nothing is appended after the path to the Firefox program.